The Eyes Have It
by Matrix Refugee
Summary: Minority Report/A.I.: Artificial Intelligence: After PreCrime is disbanded, Anderton calls on Agatha for help cracking a bizarre murder committed perhaps by a rogue Mecha. COMPLETE
1. Prologue: Eyes in the Night

+J.M.J.+

The Eyes Have It

A _Minority Report_/"A.I.: Artificial Intelligence" crossover

By "Matrix Refugee"

Author's Note:

I got the idea for this long after I saw _Minority Report_, and it was the kind of story I couldn't imagine writing, much less starting: I just bought the CD of the soundtrack, and as I listened to it, I couldn't help but notice similarities between this music and John Williams's score for "A.I.: Artificial Intelligence". Then I started having floaters of ideas: Agatha the pre-cog having visions of Bevins murdering Samantha in the Shangri-La Hotel; Anderton questioning Williamson; Agatha meeting Gigolo Joe for the first time…(Uh oh, Tom Cruise and Jude Law in the same fanfiction; my female readers may be drowning in their own drool…). We'll see where this goes…

Disclaimer:

I do not own _Minority Report_, which is the property of DreamWorks SKG, et al, based on a short novel by Philip K. Dick; Nor do I own "A.I.: Artificial Intelligence", which is the property of DreamWorks SKG et al, and which both belong to Steven Spielberg. I love you, Steve, don't sue me.

Prologue: Eyes in the Night

In the former pre-cogs' refuge in a tiny cottage on an island in the archipelago that remained of Ireland, Agatha Lively had her own small room, which was just as well; every so often she, like her two "brothers" would have a dream vision. Usually they came only once, rarely repeating themselves, and rarely as clear and vivid in the old days, when she was the property of the now defunct U.S. Department of Pre-Crime.

But one night as she slept, early in May, four years after her release, a vision struck her suspended consciousness as fiercely as it had in the old days.

Neon lighting…a number on the door of a motel room: 102…a bedroom with gaudy furniture…a short, balding man no longer young, arguing with a beautiful young woman with long dark brown hair…the girl's violet eyes wide with terror…the man punching her, kicking her, knocking her down onto a bed in the room…the girl trying to fight him…the man pulling out a switch blade knife…the blade flashing before it slashed across the girl's neck, silencing her cry…

A door opened into the room…another man entering, young, blond hair, fashionably dressed in glossy black garments, a long coat with wide skirts, his fine-featured face and well-brushed hair gleaming even in the dusk of the room…the older man confronting him as if to accuse…the blank but confused look on the young man's face.

She saw the young man's eyes, green as emeralds or new leaves, close, as if they looked into hers, warm, pleasant, innocent, and yet with something in them she could not name, but which incited warm feelings in her flesh.

Then she looked into the bloodshot grey eyes of the older man. The man with the knife. The blade flashed again. 

She woke up, sitting up. She trembled all over. Sweat gummed her tee shirt to her back and matted her long, wavy brown hair.

"Murder!" she gasped, breathing hard.

To be continued…

Afterword:

I'm currently trying to finish my other "A.I." magnum opuses "The Shadows between the Neon" and "Zenon Eyes" Eyes of Truth", so there's no telling when I will get back to this. Keep an eye on this one: I may surprise us all…. 


	2. 1 EyeWitness

+J.M.J.+

The Eyes Have It

A _Minority Report_/"A.I." Crossover

By "Matrix Refugee"

Author's Note:

Just in time for the release of the DVD of _Minority Report_, I finally came up with another chapter. This one has been a LOT harder to write than I expected, which explains why I took so long updating it. I actually have the LAST chapter of this written out, but obviously I can't post that one because it will spoil the ending. But the first chapter was better received than I expected it would be. And so…on with the crossover.

Disclaimer:

See Part I.

I: EyeWitness

Since he had all but single-handedly exposed the lie that had helped to institute Pre-Crime as a test project, John Anderton had fallen somewhat afoul with the police union. He'd left the D.C. area in something like a low-key disgrace; he and Lara had had to rebuild their life, with their new daughter Agnes, in a small hick town in New Jersey called Haddonfield. A friend in the force had helped him get a job there as a homicide detective.

He'd figured it would be an easy job. Haddonfield seemed like a harmless town, inhabited mostly by workers at the two Mecha factories north of the town, Cybertronics and Simulate City. There was a rough side of town full sleazy bars with neon lighting and no-tell hotels frequented by hookers of both makes, Orga and Mecha, but every city has its seedy elements.

He'd ended up eating his words a few days later. Every night seemed to bring another rumpus on Hackney Street in the heart of the rough section, often with someone getting killed or wounded. Many times, he'd go to examine a body someone had found in an alleyway only to find lubrication fluids spilled on the ground beneath it, wires and torn components protruding from a gash in the silicon-based dermis. Mecha destructions… they fell under property damages, but he sometimes wondered if they were better off considered homicides (Mechacides?). He'd seen a lot of cut-up Orga bodies in his day, before he went into Pre-Crime, but he could never get used to cut-up Mechas.

And if he wasn't called to the scene of a Mecha destruction, he was inspecting the scene of an assault by a malfunctioning Mecha.

He'd gotten to used to the high-tech equipment he'd used in D.C. Fingerprint scanning, DNA readings, heat-seeking Spyders—in Haddonfield, they were lucky if the ancient desktop computers back at the station worked properly. He almost had to relearn things he'd learned years ago at the academy. Stuyvesant, his supervisor, sneered at him the first day when he had a mental block on fingerprints, but Fletcher, Anderton's young partner, took little notice. He acted like it was some great honor to be the one spotting Anderton when his mind went up in the air. Anderton would have brushed this off as typical townie/rookie behavior, but Fletcher was a smart kid and a good partner with a sense of loyalty worthy of a Mecha. At first, he'd pested Anderton about Pre-Crime, what it all entailed, how it worked, what was it like arresting someone before they got a chance to strangle their wife or smother their kid. But after a few days, and after Anderton told him what had spawned Pre-Crime, Fletcher shut up about it. He'd seemed to think that Pre-Crime was a great thing, but he seemed to give up the idea, once Anderton told him about what it had done to the PreCogs…and what maximum security was like.

One night, a couple years after the Andertons had resettled in Haddonfield, Lara and he were getting ready to go out for the night to celebrate their wedding anniversary, when the phone rang.

"I hope that's not Krista canceling out," Lara called after him as he headed out into the hallway to answer it.

"Maybe she's just going to be late," Anderton called back as he picked up the handset.

"Anderton, there's been a murder," said Stuyvesant's gruff rumble on the other end.

"Where?"

"A woman at the Shangri-La Hotel on Hackney. And get there quick."

"I thought Ralston and Brickman were on tonight."

"So did I, but Ralston was a no-show and Brickman called in with a stomach bug. It's gonna be you and Fletcher."

"All right. I'll be over in ten minutes." Anderton hung up and went back to his and Lara's room.

"What's going on?" she asked, just wanting to know.

"There's been a killing at the Shangri-Las Hotel," he said, unbuttoning his dress shirt and reaching for the sleeveless black jersey he usually wore to work.

"But I thought someone else was on tonight."

"He didn't show up."

Lara nodded. She was used to it: she was a cop's daughter as well as a cop's wife. Most other women would have complained, but she knew better.

A crowd had gathered in front of the Shangri-La Hotel when Anderton and Fletcher drove up. They elbowed their way through the throng, into the lobby and upstairs to Room 102.

A reporter and a news photographer, a tall slim kid in his late twenties and a short guy in a Homburg and a too-big trench coat, had come in. Skinny Cub had started jotting notes, while Short Shutterbug was snapping shots of the room. Skinny Cub kept his eyes averted from the still female form on the bed, while Short Shutterbug ducked under the arm of one of the medical examiner's men to get right up to the bed.

"Who let the press in?" Anderton demanded to one of the crime scene investigators.

"They got here right about the same time we did," the CSI man said.

"Hey! Let the professionals have a look!" Fletcher cried.

Anderton put a hand on his shoulder. "That'll do." To the reporter he showed his badge and added, "Could you gentlemen step outside?"

Skinny Cub studied the badge for half a second. He stuffed his palm-sized datascriber into his coat pocket with the hurry of a schoolboy caught in a prank. "Oh, we're sorry," he said, utterly apologetic.

Shutterbug, whom Anderton had mentally renamed Weegee Wannabe, turned from the bed; still blocking Anderton's view, he turned the digital camera on him and snapped a shot. Anderton blinked, his left eye twinging at the flash, a souvenir of his escape from the long arm of Pre-Crime and his extreme efforts to avoid the Eyedentiscans.

"Oppression of the press, eh?" Weegee Wannabe drawled.

Skinny Cub tugged on Weegee Wannabe's shoulder. "C'mon, Hal, that'll do. We got enough to start." They went out.

On the bed, face down across the garish orange sheets, the spread pulled up over her back, lay a young woman in her twenties, dark brown hair, violet eyes, a classically beautiful face except for the blood congealed on her right temple. The ME's pulled back the covers. The girl was naked except for a pair of black lace panties and a strapless black halter-top.

They turned her over. Some of the blood had pooled on the faux satin sheets, but not much. Her throat had been cut, not at the veins, but lower, over the windpipe. A wound gaped in her chest, over her heart.

"Do we know who she is?" Anderton asked.

"We found her purse in the bathroom with the rest of her clothes. Driver's license says she's Samantha Bevins. The desk clerk ID'ed her as well, says she's a regular here," one of the CSI men said.

"Guess she won't be checkin' in here no more," Fletcher said.

"Any sign of the murder weapon?"

"Not yet. We're guessing from the size and shape of the wounds it may have been a regular pocket knife."

"Is the clerk still here?" Anderton asked.

"Yeah, he works the graveyard shift, six p.m. to six a.m. He's downstairs."

Leaving the medical examiners to prepare the body of Ms. Bevins for transport, Anderton and Fletcher went downstairs.

They found the clerk sitting in the bar, steadying himself with a glass of water. A few barflies had gathered around him, offering their moral support, including a couple females whose figures were just too shapely and whose faces were too shiny to be flesh and blood. One, a brunette in a black catsuit, leaned against the low back of the clerk's stool.

"You work the desk here?" Anderton asked the man in the middle of the group.

"Yeah, name's Williamson, Jared Williamson," the clerk replied in a slightly nasal voice. "But everyone just calls me Williamson." Slim, non-descript middle-sized guy in his early fifties, thinning gray-brown hair cropped back, faded blue eyes with the deep lines of a night worker under them which gave his face a calm, meditative expression despite the shock that had stripped it of emotion.

"I'm Detective John Anderton, this is my partner Carton Fletcher," he replied, showing his badge. Fletcher fumbled his wallet out of his pocket. "Can you tell us anything about what happened to Ms. Bevins?"

"She came in around six p.m., meetin' up with her boyfriend."

"This boyfriend got a name? Number?" Fletcher asked.

The clerk's face betrayed a faint smile tinged with humor. "I'm not sure of his number, bur everyone knows his name. They call him Gigolo Joe, or just Joe for short."

"Joe what?" Anderton asked.

"Doesn't have a last name… He's a lover-Mecha. She meets up with him every week or so. They were set to meet at their usual time, 'round seven, but she got here early as usual to spruce up for him without her old man getting wise, she said. Next thing I know after she headed upstairs, this old creep shows up, demanding to know if a Ms. Samantha Bevins had checked in. I told him I wasn't in the habit of giving out information on our guests, and I wasn't about to start. He showed me his ID, told me he was Frazier Bevins, Samantha's father. I told him even if he was the President of the United States, I wasn't giving out that info. He started to get pushy, so I told him if he didn't lay off, I was gonna call security to show him to the door. So he went out by his own manpower. I run a tight ship in some ways, keep the reins loose in others." He glanced around. "Y' know what they say: 'No-tell hotel'."

"Did you see anyone after that?" Anderton asked.

"I didn't see Bevins again. Nobody else came looking for Sam except Joe. He came by just before seven, regular as clockwork. You could set your watch by him. I gave him the key; told him to be careful after he left and open his collar, show his license. Flesh Fair's in Barn Creek as you may know, so I didn't want the Hounds pickin' him up. I worry about the guy: he's so vulnerable. He ast me to put a D.N.D. on the door of room 102, where she was waitin' up for him. I go up there every half hour, check the rooms." He paused, drawing a breath. "That's how I found her."

"Did you see Joe leave?"

"Yeah. He left 'bout five minutes after he got here. I figured they'd had a quarrel or something, or she'd changed her mind and kicked him out. Women have been known to do that. He come by the desk, dropped the key off, then he went out. I'd say he looked like he saw a ghost, but even if he had, it wouldn't faze 'm."

"Did you hear anything like a struggle upstairs?"

Williamson's shocked deadpan cracked a grin. "Oh, I hear a lot of struggles up there, but not the kind you mean. I might have heard something, but it was hard to place. Y' hear a lot of yelling in a place like this, and when you've worked it as long as I have, it tends to run together." He glanced at the shapely brunette Mecha at his back. "They do that to you."

"It's just what we do," she said, stroking Williamson's shoulder. He moved out from under her touch.

"You sure you didn't see anything else?" Fletcher asked.

"I'm sure," Williamson said. "You fellas do yer best, find the jerk who did this. I'll tell one thing: Joe didn't do it, he's too gentle for that."

"He could have been malfunctioning," Anderton said.

Williamson shook his head. "I'd have noticed something wrong with the boy. I've known him since he showed up here two years ago."

"One last question: Is there a back entrance?"

"The only other door down here is through the kitchen, but you gotta get by the front desk to get to it. But there's a fire escape exit upstairs."

"Thanks," Anderton said, shaking Williamson's hand.

"Sam had a hard life, and Joe was one of the first guys who ever treated her right. If I didn't know better, I'd say he cared about her. You make sure you find the right guy."

"We'll do our best," Anderton said.

In the lobby, Anderton passed on a word to one of the crime scene investigators. "Make sure you dust the fire escape for prints. The killer may have ducked out that way."

"Times like this, I bet you wish you were still in Pre-Crime," Fletcher said as they headed out.

"No," Anderton said, shaking his head. "Nothing could make me go back to that."

"Not even if someone restarted it with the right intentions and the right means?"

"You know what they say about the road to hell being paved with good intentions," Anderton said sagely.

"Sorry," Fletcher said. "I forgot you spent a month in hell."

"I spent a year in hell before that: Working Pre-Crime was hell, but I didn't know it." He didn't want to think about the month he'd spent in a maximum-security crypt for a crime he didn't commit.

Across the Atlantic, Agatha Lively sat crouched over her laptop, typing a message, her fingers trembling.

She drew in a long breath to relax herself. Then after a long moment, she hit the 'Send' button. Anderton would know what to do with these images in her head. Dr. Forrest, her guardian, had tried to give her a sedative to help calm her down, but Agatha had palmed the pill into her pocket. If she was going to rid herself of these images, she going to use more thorough means to send them away, once and for all.

To be continued….

Literary Easter Eggs:

Weegee—The professional name of perhaps the most famous tabloid photographer of all time, known otherwise as Arthur Fellig, who was infamous for his especially gritty photos of crime scenes in Manhattan in the 1930s.

"ast"—this is not a typo, I believe it's a New Jersey pronunciation of 'asked'.


	3. 2 Narrowed Eyes

The Eyes Have It

A _Minority Report_/"A.I." crossover

By "Matrix Refugee"

Author's Note:

I'm very delighted at how well this one is turning out so far, and at how well it's been received. I had a few misgivings about it from the first, but the more I work at it, the better it gets. Very special thanks goes to my friend Sapphire Rose, for her glowing comments on this: when I saw _Minority Report_ I had the same exact sentiments regarding the time frames of the two films (for more details, read her comment on the "Reviews" page for this fic). Mild warning to "A.I." fans: Bevins shows up in this chapter, and he's nastier than he was in "You Killed Me First", another effort of mine in which he appears.

Disclaimer:

See the Prologue

Chapter II: Narrowed Eyes

"Bet you're wishing you had the benefits of Pre-Crime to fall back on," Stuyvesant needled Anderton next morning as Anderton checked his messages. "Then you'd be able to tell exactly who killed Samantha Bevins."

"It wasn't as easy as it sounds," Anderton replied. "We had a few misses, didn't arrive in time to stop the crime from being committed, not that I condone that system."

A message from an unfamiliar address showed in his inbox. Anderton almost deleted it, but the subject line caught his eye.

_"Mr. Anderton, my visions have come back."_

He opened it.

Mr. Anderton—

I know I am not allowed to contact you, but this is urgent. I have had another vision as strong as it was when I was part of Pre-Crime. A man will kill a young woman in a hotel room 102 and he will confront a young man as if to accuse him.

Perhaps this will be of use to you, or you can tell me what it means.

Agatha L.

Stuyvesant passed by his desk. "What's up, Anderton? Message from your girlfriend?"

"No, just a message from an old friend from Pre-Crime," Anderton replied, nonchalantly.

Stuyvesant moved on; Anderton hit the "reply" button.

Agatha:

Tell me more about this vision. Call me tonight at 8.

He added his phone number and sent it.

"Hey, stop wasting time sending messages to your girlfriend!" Stuyvesant said, coming back to the desk. "You and Fletcher gotta go uptown and pay your respects to Frazer Bevins."

"I'm on it," Anderton said, shutting down the e-mail program.

It somehow didn't surprise Anderton that Bevins lived in a house in a gated community in the north end of town, close to Camden, where most of the wealthier folk lived. They had to pass through a labyrinth of security first: retina scans, facial recognition, DNA sample, just to get in through the gate.

"And I thought my dad was just bluffing when he talked about this joint's security," Fletcher said, as they walked up the brick path to the door.

"You know this Bevins at all?" Anderton asked.

"No, not personally. My dad did some carpentry for him once. ONCE. He'd never work for this creep again, didn't pay up. He's that kind of a rich snob."

Fletcher pressed the button for the buzzer, beside the door, but Anderton knocked.

A chain rattled, a bolt shot back, a smart lock buzzed. Then the door opened.

A short, heavy-set man in his early fifties looked out, his pale yellow eyes narrowed at them. "If you're looking for donations for the CRF, you've come to the wrong place—again," he snapped.

"We're with the Haddonfield police," Anderton said, showing his badge while Fletcher dug in his pockets for his wallet. "I'm Detective John Anderton, and this is my partner, Carton Fletcher."

Bevins's dull eyes brightened. He stepped aside and pulled the door open to them. "I was hoping to hear from you soon. Did you catch that thing that killed my daughter?"

"No, we just wanted to ask you if you know anything about your daughter's relationship with the Mecha in question," Anderton said as they stepped inside.

Bevins pushed the door shut and led them into the front room, which was neat and punctiliously tidy. The couch spotless, the bookshelves lining the room carefully dusted. He turned to them with a thin smile. "I know more about her and that thing than I care to know. Samantha wasn't what you'd call a wild girl, or anything like that, not even when she was in high school. She was one of the prettiest girls in her class, but she avoided the boys. I figured she was saving herself for the ring, the way I wanted her to. I wish she'd paid more attention to the sterner sex of her own species, she might not have ended up like this. She was studying dance, had a scholarship to the New Manhattan School of Ballet. She'd be starting there this summer, if she hadn't gotten involved with that _thing_. I warned her about those machines of iniquity, but you know these young folk."

Anderton sauntered past the gas fireplace, studying the framed pictures on the mantelshelf: Samantha in various dance costumes: in a long blue tutu with five other girls in the same costume, in a black goth gown, peering around her arms crossed in front of her face; with two other girls, all of them in tight bodices and short, pouffy skirts the kind the dance hall girls in ancient Westerns wear, in a button-down shirt, vest and slacks, a gray fedora tilted over one ear. No pictures of the family,. Not even one of her mother.

"What makes you call them that?" Fletcher asked.

Bevins's eyes glittered. "Are you the sort of men who consort with creatures like that?" he asked.

"No, I'm happily married," Anderton said.

"Besides, we're asking the questions," Fletcher said, bantering.

"I call them that because I've followed the rise of the machines. The first droids built fifty years ago were mere clunkers that could barely fulfill the tasks a human could do more efficiently. But then they started building these mechanicals, these mechaniques. And they built them to do what: to replace us, first in the work place, now in our beds. I'd rather that I found Samantha rolling on the floor with the kid next door than with one of _those_!"

Anderton's seasoned ears filtered the words, seeking a reason for this tirade. "That's all interesting, but we'd rather that you stuck to the facts. Did you know how long she'd known this Mecha?"

Bevins cleared his throat and paced across the room, passing a bookcase. Anderton scanned the titles of the books as Bevins spoke. "She finished high school about a year ago and she was working at a video store in town. She started going out a lot, at night, said she was going to the library or shopping." He turned and smiled sourly. "That wasn't the only place she went. She used to end up on _that_ street a lot, in one of those dives I'd warned her about. I went in once, about five months ago, found her in bed with one of those things, probably the same one that killed her. I dragged her home then; she gave me a million excuses, that she and that thing were just friends."

"Did you follow her again?" Anderton asked. He made a mental note of the titles of the books on the shelves: _Seven to One: A Reductionist's Resource Guide_; _Machines on the Rise_ and what looked like bound volumes of _The Fleshly Clarion_, the official magazine of the ARM.

"Of course I followed her again," Bevins said. "So would any concerned father. You have a child, Anderton?"

"I have a three year old daughter," he said.

"I got a half sister two years younger 'n me, but I know better than to hang over her and her friends," Fletcher said.

Bevins ignored Fletcher. "Then you understand my concerns."

"Did you follow her last night?" Anderton asked.

Bevins paused, then nodded. "I did. And it's good that I did. I followed her up to the Shangri-La. I'd found a date in her planner. I got delayed by my work—I was in plastics but I'm semi-retired now, I'm in advertising—I had a batch of copy to finish. But I headed out just after seven." He drew in a long breath. "But I got there too late. I asked the clerk if he could tell me what room she was in. He wouldn't say, so I went looking for myself once the clerk turned his back." he paused again, passing the tip of his tongue over his lips, but Anderton thought he saw something affected in the gesture. "I went upstairs…and this Mecha passed by me in the hallway: blond hair, blue eyes, they'd made it to look like a twenty year old man…and I could see red splotches on the cuffs of its sleeves. I kept to the shadows so it wouldn't take notice of me. It walked right by me.

"I noticed a door was ajar in the hallway, so I pushed it open." He drew in a long breath and blotted his eyes on the back of his hand. "That's where I found her…She was already gone."

"Did you call the police?" Fletcher said.

Bevins shook his head. "I was too stunned. I couldn't think straight. Her mother died when she was twelve, so losing her…I lost what's left of my family…If you've ever had a loved one…die so suddenly—and especially so senselessly…you know the pain."

Anderton nodded. "I hear you, Mr. Bevins. I lost my son when he was five. He was kidnapped and killed. He'd be going on twelve now. Busted me up terribly: my wife and I separated for almost two years."

"Then you know exactly how it feels," Bevins said.

"Yeah."

Bevins smiled thinly. "Good, I'm glad a man like you is on the case—you're better equipped to handle it properly."

"We're doing what we can to solve it," Anderton said.

"Do what you have to, but be very careful around that Mecha if you catch it: it's dangerous," Bevins warned.

"I've been in homicide for fifteen years: I know the drill," Anderton said.

"I bet you do," Bevins said. "But remember, this is not an ordinary human you're dealing with: this thing is tireless. Doesn't have to rest, doesn't have to eat, so chasing it down could be impossible."

"Even machines can be stopped," Anderton said.

"Only another machine could probably stop it," Bevins said. "But if they came up with a machine that could do that kind of work, they'd use it for other police work, and you'd find yourself out of a job."

"That ain't gonna happen," Fletcher scoffed, his hands gathered slightly.

"One last question: where did you go last night after you found your daughter's body?" Anderton asked.

"I came home…cried myself to sleep on the couch. You'd do the same if your daughter was killed…by one of _those_," Bevins wiped his eyes on his sleeve. Anderton didn't see any moisture there: either a blocked duct or he was faking it.

"We'll be in touch," Anderton said. "You must be in a lot of pain; perhaps we should leave."

"I've got a lot of things to do, people to call," Bevins said. "But talking about it has helped. Thanks for stopping by."

Fletcher glared sideways at Anderton, but he ignored his partner's dirty look. "We're doing everything we can to help you get some closure to this," Anderton said.

Once they were back in the car, Fletcher glowered at Anderton. "That guy was lying and you know it."

"We haven't any evidence that he isn't," Anderton said. "We weren't questioning him yet: we were just testing the waters."

"You knew?"

Anderton wagged his head. "Little cues, body language. Not enough to establish him as the perpetrator, but enough to start unraveling his alibi." He looked at the other houses nearby. "Let's see if the neighbors know anything about Bevins's whereabouts last night."

The only person they found at home was Mrs. Pineau, an elderly woman and her young male companion Mecha in the unit next to Bevins's.

"So did Bevins come home at all last night?" Fletcher asked her.

"No, not till late. Reginald said he heard Bevins come in about one in the morning, but I was asleep. I didn't see his girl come out this morning, so I got worried. Then I heard about her death on the news." She eyed Fletcher. "Too bad she died, she'd be a good girl for you and she'd get away from her old man."

"Why, were they having trouble?" Anderton asked, turning from the window. The way the unit was angled on the lot, there was no way anyone in Bevins's unit could go out without Mrs. Pineau and her companion seeing or hearing something.

"Trouble?" she laughed humorlessly. "Those two were at it every night. Sometimes it sounded like he was stabbing her, what with the screams. I sent Reginald out one night to complain to the superintendent. He told me the superintendent told him Bevins was chasing out a burglar that had broken into Samantha's room."

"This gets interesting," Anderton said, as he and Fletcher drove back to the station.

"Yeah, starting to sound fishy if you ask me," Fletcher said. He glanced out the window, then looked at Anderton. "Think those Pre-Cogs would know what the heck this is all about?"

Agatha's e-mail flashed before Anderton's eyes. "Fletch, you don't want to go there."

"I take that as a yes."

"You don't know what that entails."

At the station, they had a message from the CS unit: they'd lifted a few prints from the door latch of the fire escape, but they didn't match anything in the system.

"Mechas got fingerprints, yes or no?" Anderton asked Stuyvesant.

The older man snorted, which turned into a raucous laugh. "You never had Mecha then. Weren't you divorced?"

"Separated: I kept celibate; I was trying to find my son."

"Well, then, no, they don't." 

"So it could have been the Mecha," Fletcher said.

"Well, does, anyone know where this Joe is now?" Stuyvesant asked. "Have you talked with it?"

"No," Anderton replied.

Zhulianova from dispatch came in with a report which she tossed onto a desk. "I heard that: Blue Diamond Escort Service just filed a missing Mecha report; they'd also like to know where's Joe."

"Can you ask them to pull any phone records on him? Pager messages? Anything?" Anderton asked Berube, their technical wizard.

"I'm on it," he said, reaching for a phone.

An hour later, Berube had the records on Joe's pager: he'd had several calls since his disappearance, but apparently he'd switched off his pager, and there had been a call for him from a public phone near Jack's Hotel, up Hackney Street, a couple blocks from the Shangri-La, just an hour and a half before Samantha Bevins had been found.

"Back to square one," Anderton said.

"Simple enough: She called to double check he was coming, but she didn't know her date had a bug in his brain," Stuyvesant said.

"We can't say that for certain, we haven't established time of death," Anderton said. "And we don't know if he was malfunctioning either."

"We might know soon," Berube said. "They're sending over his file: see if they recorded any malfunctions.

_And he'll probably be clean,_ Anderton thought. _Even Mechas got alibis._

Anderton kept an ear cocked, listening for the phone that evening, but it never rang. He was going to tell Lara about Agatha's message, but he decided it would be better to tell her after Agatha had actually called him.

The phone rang at 4 a.m., waking him out of a sound sleep. Wide awake, he jumped out of bed and ran for the phone.

"Hello?"

A long pause, heavy breathing. "Is this line safe?"

"Agatha?"

"Are you…Anderton?"

"Yes, it's me. Is something wrong?"

Another long silence. "I cannot tell you here. The lines might not be safe. Can you get me to the States?"

He knew he'd be violating a number of restrictions, but if it was that important…"Sure. I'll email you the details."

"Thank you. I know you can help."

"Help? Help you do what--?" the line cut out before he could ask another question.

He hung up the phone and went to the computer to start searching for the cheapest flights from Kilarney to Camden.

To be continued…


	4. 3 Eyes on the Shadow

+J.M.J.+

The Eyes Have It

By "Matrix Refugee"

Author's Note:

Hoo! This one wants to steam roller its way to the end when before, I could barely get started with it. The two universes seem to be dovetailing excellently; I'm pleased to say; and, as Lady Neferankh hoped, there's more of Agatha in this: She winds up having as pivotal a role here as she did in the film, which is a vast improvement on the Philip K. Dick novella _Minority Report_ was based on, where the Pre-Cogs are little better than part of the computer. Steve put a human face on them. Also…An "A.I." character I **_NEVER_** wanted to write about appears in this chapter. Read it and find out…

Disclaimer:

See the Prologue.

Chapter III: Eyes on the Shadow

"Lara, we have a guest coming today," Anderton told his wife next morning as they got dressed.

"A guest?" she asked, pulling he jersey over her head. "Who?"

It's Agatha Lively…the girl who used to be a Pre-Cog," he said. He wasn;t sure why, but he felt oddly guilty breaking this news to her.

"I thought she was in seclusion," Lara asked, confused, slipping one arm into the sleeve of her shirt.

"She is…but she needs to speak to me about something important. She wouldn't even tell me what it was, over the phone," he explained. "She didn't feel secure enough."

Lara nodded. "Well, that's understood, after the way they had her thoughts wire-tapped in Pre-Crime. When is she coming?"

"She's coming into Camden on a 5 p.m. flight from Kilarney. I'll pick her up; I got her a hotel room."

"There's the spare room. She can have that."

"No, I wouldn't want you to go to that trouble."

"John, she's better off with us."

"She's having visions again," he warned.

"I think I can handle it, and that's all the more reason she should be with people she knows and trusts."

"They're pretty bad: they kept her on natural sedatives, herbs and stuff to keep her calm,"

"Do you know what kind of herbs? I could get them at the drugstore."

"Chamomile was one. I'm not sure about the others."

"I'll ask her when she comes, or I could ask the pharmacist what herbs work that way."

First thing that morning, Anderton and Fletcher went to the medical examiner's office to get the final report on Ms. Bevins.

"If there's one thing I HATE about working homicide, it's going to the morgue," Fletcher grumbled as they went in.

"This is the easy part: stiffs can't hurt you," Anderton replied with a thin smile. "Making the arrest, that bugs me: that's the dangerous part."

Samantha Bevins's body lay on its back on a steel table, covered from the neck down with a sheet. The gash on her neck looked less ghastly now that the blood had been washed from it.

"What about time of death?" Anderton asked Ms. Hanford, the ME, who stood by the foot of the table.

"I placed it at around six thirty and six forty-five," she replied. "Oh, and the killer was left handed."

Fletcher stared at her "How can you tell that?"

"The track of the knife: the initial cut is on the left side of her neck, where a left-handed man would have started," Ms Hanford said. "That cut wasn't fatal. She has three stab wounds, two to the chest transfixing the heart, one in the abdomen. She was lying on her back as she hemorrhaged internally."

"How'd you find that out?" Fletcher asked.

"Bruising on her back: the blood collected in her torso."

"Did you find any DNA under her nails?" Anderton asked.

"No, the nails were cleaned. Found a couple soap particles, but that wasn't enough to say someone had washed her hands. Oh, and she was raped." Fletcher winced at this announcement.

"Semen traces in the vagina?" Anderton asked.

"No, bruising of the lining," the ME replied.

"So it must have been the Mecha," Fletcher said.

"Could have been a human wearing a condom, but most rapists are unlikely to do that," the ME said.

"Or it could have been a human who did that to make it look like a Mecha raped and-or killed her," Anderton suggested.

"You sound like you don't think the Mecha did it," Fletcher said as he and Anderton drove back to the station. "You got something about Mechas?"

"No, it's just that a lot of stuff isn't adding up," Anderton replied. "Besides, it's innocent until proven guilty. And Mechas have it worse when they're falsely accused."

"Yeah, but it's just a Mecha."

"When you've been falsely accused, the way I was, Fletch, you don't want to see anyone falsely accused."

Fletcher was silent for a long while. Then he spoke. "I bet you wish you had that Pre-Cog girl around to help you on this."

Anderton didn't reply. He couldn't tell Fletcher about the guest he had coming that day.

"Is that you being your usual strong, silent self, or are you thinking what I think you're thinking?" Fletcher asked

"The jury is out on that one," Anderton admitted.

Another missing Mecha report had come in, but this one was different: Cybertronics of New Jersey, in the north end of town was reporting that one of its prototypes for a new line of child Mecha had been lost in a forest by one of their field testers.

"I didn't think they made kids," Stuyvesant grumbled. "Real ones are hard enough to deal with, why make fake ones?"

"Think there's much chance at finding the strays?" Fletcher asked Anderton over lunch.

"Not with the Flesh Fair over in Barn Creek," Anderton said, glancing up from the maintenance and performance file on the lover-Mecha.

"'S pose we could put the bite on the Johnson? Make 'um keep an eye out for two Mechas, an eleven year old kid with light brown hair and a twenty-something year old guy with blonde hair?"

"Black hair," Anderton corrected.

"I thought Bevins said it was blonde."

"Default color on this guy, this Belladerma J-01229 is black," Anderton said. "It's got SmartDermis: it can change its hair color, eye color, even skin color."

"Bet you wished you had that when you were in D.C. trying to dodge You Know What."

"That wouldn't have mattered: I'd still have to change pattern of the backs of my retinas," Anderton said, turning back to the file. The backs of his eyes ached a little at the memory.

Date of last inspection: May 7, 2058.

Malfunctions, Processor: None

Malfunctions, Neural system: None

Malfunctions, Mechanical: None

Anderton shook his head, read over the document again. He clicked to another page.

"Something up?" Fletcher asked around a mouthful of soy pastrami.

"No, nothing's up, that's what's the problem," Anderton replied.

"Huh?"

"Our boy doesn't have any recent problems: no bugs, viruses, glitches, system hiccups. Nothing. He's as clean as a whistle." He didn't say it, but he found that the Mecha was ambidextrous, but predominantly right-handed.

"Wasn't there a Mecha of the same line that strangled a bunch of people in a casino in Nova Vegas?"

"Yeah, but that was three years ago. That particular unit had a faulty chip, which had been removed from our boy following a recall on that particular chip," Anderton said, closing the file and removing the disk from the data pad.

"So you're saying our boy didn't have any malfunctions, so he could have done this willfully?"

"Not willfully: his volition parameters are limited. He doesn't have it in him to assault anyone, much less a woman, much less rape a woman, slash her throat and stab her three times. And his last maintenance was only a week ago."

"So that rules out the Mecha."

"It just makes it more unlikely," Anderton said, turning to the desktop computer. He ran a 'Net search on the ARM and "7 to 1", another anti-Mecha group.

He ran a search in the documents on the ARM homepage, searching the back issues of the _Fleshly Clarion_, looking for the name Frazer Bevins.

"Oh…my…god," he muttered, scrolling down the list of articles and external links to other documents by the same writer.

"What?" Fletcher asked.

"I got a feeling we're gonna be interviewing Frazer Bevins again very soon."

"Why?"

Anderton turned the flat screen around to face Fletcher. The younger man stared at the screen; the remains of his sandwich nearly fell from his slack hand.

"Yikes! What's Bevins doing, running a one-man anti-Mecha propaganda machine?"

"It looks that way."

"So what are you thinking?"

"Based on the evidence we've gathered, it looks to me that Bevins may have hired someone to kill Samantha and make our boy look like the killer, just to prove his point that Mecha are dangerous."

"But sacrifice his own daughter?"

"People with a fanaticism as strong as this will do anything to prove their point. Add to this that his own daughter was defying him…he might stoop to anything."

A man will kill a young woman in a hotel room 102 and he will confront a young man as if to accuse him…

"You okay, Anderton?" Fletcher asked. "Your face just went a little pale."

"I'm all right," Anderton replied. He closed the 'Net browser and logged onto the criminal records database, running a search on Frazer Bevins.

"More threads just got pulled from Bevins's cover," he said.

"Why, he got a record?" Fletcher asked.

"Destruction of sentient property, sabotaging sentient property…disorderly conduct at a roboticists' convention."

"So there's more to this goon than just a bereaved father."

"We'll have to find that Mecha and scan it's cube first," Anderton said.

"But first you gotta find it," Stuyvesant said, coming by their desks. "Don't tell me you're planning on fishing it out of the Flesh Fair."

"We have to cover all bases," Anderton said.

"Well, don't forget, you ast me if you could leave early today, since your wife's sister coming in on that flight into Camden," Stuyvesant growled, rubbing it in.

"Guess if we're gonna pay Johnson a call, we better do it now," Fletcher said, as Anderton got up and reached for his jacket.

"You ever been to one, a Flesh Fair, I mean?" Fletcher asked, as they drove down Route 28, heading southeast toward Barn Creek.

"No, can't say that I want to, either," Anderton admitted.

"You didn't miss anything…I went to one once just 'cause my cousins in Trenton were going to one when I stayed with them one summer," Fletcher said, shuddering. "It's bad enough, seeing things that look human on the outside getting burnt with acid and shot through flaming hoops into a fan, but then they got this one guy onto this bag toss thing with a bucket of acid over his head. I didn't throw anything; I was just there for the ride. Glad I didn't. The acid fell and hit the guy and we all found out what he really was." Fletcher looked away to the window on his right. Anderton snuck a look at him. The younger man's face was almost as green as the foliage of the trees around them. "He was Orga. A flesh and blood guy. Must have been drunk or drugged or something: he didn't put up a fight or anything when the goons chained him up. But when the acid hit him…ugh! He started writhing and screaming. It looked like something out of a damned horror movie."

"That's sick. That should have shut the bloody operation down," Anderton said.

"No such luck: Johnson's got plenty of friends. His cousin is the Irish ambassador or something, plus he's got connections to the Irish mob out in what's left of Hoboken. His late wife was the daughter of some mob boss, I think."

"Figures. The crooks always take care of each other."

They followed a series of day-glo signs advertising the Flesh Fair to the Barn Creek Fairgrounds, current home of the "Celebration of Life."

Security grudgingly let them into the enclosure. Anderton and Fletcher roved the grounds. Anderton took careful note of the pen, the iron cage at the head of the arena, where the captive Mechas were held until their moment in the spotlight. There were no Mechas in it that early, but looked as if it could hold several dozen.

He spotted a girl behind it, a blowsy red-head with splotches of scarlet and orange in her hair, clad in frayed denim cut-offs and a sleeveless blouse with the front knotted, smoking a cigarette.

"Excuse me, miss, could you tell us where we can find Kevin Lord Johnson-Johnson?" Anderton asked.

The girl looked up at them. She stuffed her cigarettes into her shorts.

"You coppers?" she asked.

"Yes. We're just here to ask him a few questions," Anderton asked.

"We won't bitecha," Fletcher promised.

She pointed over her shoulder with her thumb, to a knot of trailers beyond the cage. "The biggest trailer," she said.

"Thanks," Anderton said.

They reached the largest trailer, climbed the shaky wooden steps to it and rapped on the door.

"Who's thar?" asked a guttural voice behind the door.

"Haddonfield police, we just need you to answer a few questions," Anderton said. "Is Kevin Lord Johnson-Johnson in there?"

The door opened and a bulky man in his early fifties emerged, clad in a dingy collarless button-down shirt over frayed corduroy pants. He looked at them with small, piggish gray eyes set in a meaty but pallid face. "Oi'm he," he said gruffly and stepped aside, letting them enter.

The interior was a smoky snarl of rickety furniture, overflowing wastebaskets, and papers. A meticulously dressed little man with a rat-like olive-skinned face looked up from what appeared to be account ledgers spread out on the table.

"Phillip, we'll finish the accouynthing layther," Johnson told him. Rat face bundled the ledgers together and stepped outside.

Johnson turned back to Anderton. "Now, what may Oi ask, can Oi do far you genthlemen?"

"There's been a strange murder in the area a few days ago, and it seems to involve a male lover-Mecha. It isn't a suspect, but we want it for questioning." Anderton took a photo of Joe from his breast pocket and handed it to Johnson. "We wondered if, should you come across a Mecha matching this photo, could you set it aside and turn it over to us?"

"We arren't in the hahbit o' settin' Mechs asoide fahr annything less th'n especial playce in th' show," Johnson said. "If you've seen wun Mech, you've seen 'em awl. And if this wun is what you saye it is, perhahps ware doin' you a fayvur boy puttin' 'um whar it b'lawngs: in the scrahp heap."

"Hey, you don't know who you're talking to," Fletcher snapped. He jabbed a thumb at Anderton. "Anderton here took down Pre-Crime single-handed

Anderton ignored Fletcher's faux pas for the moment. Looking out the window for a moment, he noticed a man approaching the trailer; even at that distance, and even through the grimy window, the stranger looked an awful lot like Frazer Bevins.

"If nothing else, perhaps you could speed up your naturalization process by helping protect the society you adopted," Anderton said.

Johnson chuckled humorlessly. "Oi b'lieve Oi'm ahlready doin' moy pahrrt in moy own waye." He looked to the door. "And if you will exchuse me, perhahps you lads should take yer questions elsewhahr

"You wouldn't happen to know a Frazer Bevins, would you?" Anderton asked even as he started toward the door, Fletcher at his heels. 

"Oi'm awhar awv 'm, but no, naht parsonally," Johnson replied, impatient.

"Thanks," Anderton said.

They went out. Anderton scanned the crowd of crewmembers and techs preparing the arena for the next show. He sought out Bevins, but he didn't spot him anywhere.

Then he spotted Bevins's stocky form heading straight for Johnson's trailer, as the accountant returned. So much for not knowing Bevins personally… 

Back in the car, Anderton turned to Fletcher. "Whatever you do, never but never _ever_ mention anything I've done in the past," he warned. "Especially to crooks like Johnson."

"I was just trying to give you a little leverage," Fletcher fumbled.

"You did it the wrong way," Anderton said. "Pre-Crime is almost a bad word, and it should be. No one should be prosecuted for what they _might_ do, but for what they did. People can change their minds at the last second."

Anderton pulled the car over, pulled out his wallet, and took out twenty Newbucks. "Here," he handed it to Fletcher. "This is a retainer fee; if you need more, I'll pay you back."

"Retainer for what?"

"I want you to go to the Flesh Fair tonight. Get a seat as close to the pen as you can. If you see anything that looks even remotely like our boy, you call me. Got it?"

"I got it." 

The car phone rang at that moment. Anderton punched the switch for it.

"Anderton, you and Fletcher get down here to the station: we've got some new evidence," Stuyvesant said.

"We're on the way," Anderton said.

When they came into the station, Stuyvesant held up a clear plastic evidence bag under Anderton's nose. Inside the bag was a thin plastic-looking fiber with a bit of green plastic attached to one end.

"We picked this up in an alleyway a block from the Shangri-La," Stuyvesant said. "The fiber is a microconductor typical of what you find in Mechas and the plastic is the kind they use for Mecha license implants. So our guess is that Mecha-boy removed his tag. And tell me, just why would he do that?"

"We don't know if he removed it. We don't even know if he removed it," Anderton said.

"Yeah, I suppose the same person you seem to think murdered Samantha Bevins also removed the suspect's license tag," Stuyvesant snapped. "Just because you worked Pre-Crime doesn't make you Sherlock Holmes." With that Stuyvesant stomped to his office.

Anderton calmed himself by drawing in a long breath and letting it out. "On that note, I'd better get going if I'm gonna make it to Camden," he said.

"Are you all right?" Lara asked her husband as they drove to Camden, she driving, he trying to relax beside her in the front seat, watching the tunnels of green broken only by small shops and driveways, so alien compared to the urban jungle of D.C.

"The Bevins case is harder than it seemed, and Stuyvesant is really riding my rear about it," he admitted.

"He's jealous: he knows he's not half as good as you are," she said.

"He's good in his own way: that's why he's a supervisor," he said.

He'd been concerned that Lara would be annoyed by the suddenness of the news that Agatha would be staying with them for a few days, but it didn't faze her. Agatha was the sort who wouldn't notice if the house was a little untidy. In the brief time the young girl had spent hiding out with them in the cottage Lara's parents had left to her, Agatha had actually found the light clutter interesting.

They found her in the concourse of a smaller terminal off the main terminal. They almost missed her, but Anderton spotted her: a middle-sized girl in a plain, cream-colored blouse over a long black skirt, a small carry-on back next to her, reading a book—an actual bound volume—of what turned out to be a one-volume condensation of James Frazer's _The Golden Bough_. She looked up at them even before they came close, her blue eyes calm but distant, their gaze a little fixed, the way they had always been.

"Agatha, how have you been?" Lara said, holding out an arm to hug the girl. Agatha eyed her a little quizzically at first, but she reached out and returned the hug.

"Lara, it's you…I have been better," she said. She looked around, a little furtive. "I cannot tell you here."

"Hello, Agatha," Anderton said, offering his hand. Agatha eyed him then clasped it.

"Hello, Anderton," she said. She'd never been much for social skills, but neither was he.

All the way back to the car and on the way home, Agatha listened as Lara and he filled her in on what had happened to them in the last four years. Anderton knew she wouldn't let much out until they got back to the house, and Lara knew better than to press Agatha about anything.

Almost home, they picked Agnes up from Krista's house. Agatha's eyes brightened when she saw the little one.

"Agnes, this is Agatha, a friend of ours from Ireland, the lady I told you about this morning," Anderton told his daughter as he strapped her into her booster seat in the back seat, beside Agatha.

Agnes looked up at her, smiling. "Hi, Agatha," she said.

"Hello, Agnes," Agatha replied, with a shy smile. Agnes's smile got bigger and she reached up to touch Agatha's face. Agatha looked up at Anderton, a nervous light in her eyes.

"She likes you," Anderton explained.

"You have pretty eyes," Agnes said.

"Thank you," Agatha replied, the nervousness leaving her face.

Lara helped Agatha settle into the guest room, then left the newcomer to adjust to her new surroundings while she (Lara) went to start supper.

"I'd almost forgotten how odd she is," Anderton said, as Agnes curled up with one of her picture books under the table.

"She's unique," Lara said. "It's her gifts that make her seem odd…but she does have her quirks."

"I think she's nice," Agnes piped up. "She's strange, but she's nice."

Anderton smiled, peering under the table at his girl. "Yes, she's a nice person."

At that moment, Agatha appeared in the doorway, peering at them. "May I watch?" she asked.

"Of course," Lara said.

Agatha was accustomed to a strict vegetarian diet from her days in Pre-Crime and even before that, in the state facility she had been raised in. Lara had found some recipes to accommodate this. After dinner, as Lara started the dishes, Agatha "got down to business".

"I told you that my visions have come back," Agatha told Anderton as they sat in the living room, facing each other across the coffee table. "But I could not say much. The information could reach the wrong ears."

"You're perfectly safe here," Anderton said. "Tell me what you saw."

"It is all in fragments…a hotel room, number 102…there is some ugly-colored furniture, unpleasant colors…there are lights outside the windows, colored lights shaped like words…neon signs…a girl is in the room, on the bed…a man comes in, an older man…they start to fight, words, shouting…he pushes her down on the bed, sitting on her…he hits her across the neck, she bleeds…he cuts her chest…he washes his hands after she is dead…another man comes in, light hair, light eyes, a gentle face…the older man approaches him, as if to accuse her…then he kisses the girl and goes out. But there is more…

She paused a long time. "I cannot remember. I am sorry."

"It's all right, give it time. I'll find a way to help you," he said. "What did the first man look like?"

She shook her head. "Ugly, older than you, thinning hair, yellow eyes."

_Frazer Bevins_, he realized.

"Agatha, I'll have to ask you for your permission to download your vision…I think you may have seen a case I'm investigating right now. Can you tell me about the young man? Do you know where he is?"

She dropped her gaze, her eyes unblinking in a way that made him think oddly of a Mecha.

"He is all alone, he is in a forest. Then there are others, other people, but they are not like other people. They are all of metal and plastic…like he is," she said at length. "He has a gash in his chest, a tag has been removed. He removed it." she stopped, looking up, concern, even worry in her eyes.

"It's all right," he said, reassuring her. He leaned across and put his hand on her shoulder in a brotherly way. "My boss won't like it, but I think you can help us."

To be continued…

Literary Easter Eggs:

"I bet you wish you had that Pre-Cog girl…"—I was listening to the soundtrack CD of _Minority Report_ (of course!) as I drafted this, in particular, the cut entitled "Greenhouse Effect". Towards the very end of the cut, Agatha's somewhat eerie motif, scored for solo female voice and Uileann bagpipes, appears, slightly understated. It was at this exact moment that I wrote this scene, and I was having a hard time giving an extra little clincher before I moved on to the next scene…but the soundtrack helped me cap it off.

Joe's serial number—"1229" is Jude Law's birth date.


	5. 4 Inner Eye

+J.M.J.+

The Eyes Have It

By "Matrix Refugee"

Author's Note:

An odd subplot is creeping in here, which I think stems from the somewhat goofy question my friend "fom4life" asked after we saw the film (_Minority Report_), something to the effect of, do you think Anderton had any, um, more personal interest in Agatha? The answer of course is, not likely, it's more a brother/sister relationship, even a father/daughter relationship…but I'll let this chapter speak for itself. WARNING: Incest references, a tangential portrayal of indecent assault, and violence, but I think I handled it in a PG-13 way, ala "Law and Order". I'd had an idea to do an "A.I."/"Law and Order" crossover, but I didn't think it would work, so some of the material I'd jotted down for that got subsumed into this (Fletcher is kind of how I imagine the Jerry Orbach character on L&O might have been at about the same age), including a nasty subplot involving Bevins. 

Disclaimer:

See the Prologue.

Chapter IV: Inner Eye

Anderton left Agatha to settle in. he had a phone call to make to a hacker friend of his.

"What?" Rip demanded on the other end of the line when it finally picked up.

"Rip, it's me, Anderton. I need your help. Can you come up here sometime tonight? Doesn't matter how late."

"Why, what is it now? Forgot your password again?" They both laughed: an old joke dating back to their college years when Anderton kept forgetting one of his passwords for the college computers and Rip had fished it out for him, on several occasions.

"No, it has to do with a case I'm working on. I'll explain the details when you get here…one thing: can you bring along a brain harness?"

"What for, you got a perp who won't talk, so gonna search his brain? That's a constitutional offense, y' know. I mean, it's one thing to topple a Federal institution, it's another to take on the Founding Fathers."

"It's nothing like that. I'll tell you when you get here."

"Okay, I'm on the way," Rip said, hanging up.

Rip didn't show up till 11.30. In the meantime, Anderton prepared Agatha, first by explaining what he was going to do, then by giving her the natural sedatives. When Rip came, Anderton led him into the den, where Agatha lay on her back on the couch, half asleep, half in a trance.

"Holy moly!" Rip cried. "I can see why y' didn't brief me on this. She's a former Federal ward, isn't she?"

"She was," Anderton said.

Rip set to work, taping the electrodes to Agatha's head (Lara had helped crop back her hair, making it easier for the electrodes to stick). He plugged the harness into his laptop, loaded a DVD-RW into the burner, punched a few keys, then sat back.

A dully-colored splotch appeared on the translucent flatscreen, resolving into a number on the door of a hotel room: 102. the door opened into the room at the Shangri-La. Their view moved in through the doorway.

Samantha Bevins sat on the bed, checking her makeup with a small mirror. She turned toward the door with a smile, which quickly turned to a snarl of annoyance. She got up. The sound was muted, but Anderton lip-read much of the exchange. _Dad?! What the h--- are you doing here?_

Bevins circled around the foot of the bed, looking at her. _Well, who is it now?_

_He's certainly not **you**._

_Who is he?!_

She stalked away to the bathroom, the angle following her. Anderton couldn't make out what she was saying, but he guessed it was something like, 'It's none of your business who I'm seeing.' Bevins asked a question that might have been, 'Is he someone I know?'

Anderton didn't get the reply, but it was doubtlessly 'NO'.

_Well, who is he?_

She stalked back into the room. _Why should you care? So you can keep me all to yourself?_

_Who is he, dammit?!_

She turned away with an incoherent snarl that might have been an expletive.

_It's that Mecha, isn't it? Isn't it?! That's why you're not saying._

She shook her head violently with another incoherent reply.

Bevins grabbed her by the shoulders and shoved her backward toward the bed. She tried to push him away, but he kicked her feet out from under her. She sprawled on her back across the mattress. She tried to get up, but he was on her, choke-holding her with one hand as he worked at the front of his pants with the other. He drew a packet that probably was a condom out of his pocket and pulled it open with his teeth.

Anderton had to look away for a moment. Even after his years at Pre-Crime, witnessing dozens of murders, he still hadn't completely hardened to it, especially horrible things like this. He looked at Agatha, who twitched slightly on the couch.

He looked back to the screen: Samantha on her back, gasping, eyes half-rolled back in her head, her mouth writhing in barely coherent curses.

Bevins let her go. She looked up at him. _At least Joe doesn't use me!_ she spat.

Bevins reached into his trouser pocket again, drew out a switchblade knife. He pressed the stud on its side: the blade darted out, then it plunged, slashing across her throat, right to left. She trembled in pain, choking on her own blood. She jolted as he drove the knife into her chest. Her head rolled slack to one side, her eyes dulling.

Bevins got up, went to the bathroom, washed his hands and the knife. He rummaged in her purse, found a manicure set. Filling a plastic cup with soap and water, he set to work cleaning her nails. He rearranged her body, turned her over onto her belly. He looked out the window, then stepped into the shadows of the room and sat down on the end of the couch at the further end of the room.

The door opened. A tall, graceful young man entered, stepping into the room dramatically, setting the key down on the TV cabinet to the left of the door. The neon lighting shining through the windows glinted off his too-glossy hair and skin. Its hair color was lighter than it had been in its license photo, but Anderton still recognized it. Joe strode up to the foot of the bed with a 1930's film idol's swagger, paused, posed with feet well apart and in one smooth gesture, whipped off its long black simuleather jacket and flung it to the floor behind him. with the grace of a dancer or a living Greek statue, it lowered its lithe form onto the bed beside Samantha, leaned over her, touched her neck, its fingertip coming away with a splotch of red clinging to it.

Something moved in the shadows even as Joe climbed quickly off the bed. Bevins approached, clearly asking the Mecha when he'd last been with Samantha. The Mecha dropped its gaze slightly, then looked up, replying with an exact figure, down to the last second. Bevins stepped past the Mecha, approached the bed, leaned over Samantha. He bade her some kind of gruff farewell, pulled down the covers, and planted a kiss on her naked shoulder. With that, he left the room.

Their view followed Bevins, out to the hallway, down to the fire escape entrance. He took out his handkerchief, and covering his hand with it, lifted the latch and went out, down the stairs to the alleyway.

The images started to flick back and forth: Bevins driving to the Barn Creek Fairgrounds, where he met up with Lord Johnson-Johnson; Joe descending the stairs of the Shangri-La, entering the lobby, depositing the key and heading out before Williamson could exchange a few parting pleasantries with him…Bevins giving his sob story to Johnson, _If you catch this lover-Mecha give the crowd a spiel about how it killed Sam, cut her throat open, raped her, build it up, get the crowd in a real frenzy_…Joe striding along the sidewalks of Hackney Street, stepping quickly into an alleyway behind a club when a police cruiser passed by; he stood against a wall, opening a compartment in his left wrist, taking out a small scalpel, then opening the neck of his shirt to slide the tip of the blade under the edge of the luminous green license tag embedded into his artificial flesh; shuddering with the pain, he cut out the tag and removed it. A small fiber dropped from the tag to the pavement as he slipped the tag into his coat pocket…Johnson wagging his head as Bevins finished his story; _what's all that for? Is this another of your publicity schemes for the ARM? 7 to 1?_ Bevins putting a wad of Newbucks into Johnson's shirt pocket…Joe threading his way through the back streets of Haddonfield, reaching the town limits, heading for the thickest part of the woods…

It didn't end there. There was more, a jumble of images, of Johnson letting loose his Hounds to round up a group of derelict Mechas, among them Joe and what looked like a boy about eleven years old, possibly the demo model Cybertronics had had go astray; the Mechas bundled into a large net which was then carried to the Fairgrounds via a strange balloon in the form of the moon; Johnson's henchmen chaining the boy and Joe to a carnival-type bag-toss which, when tripped, would pour three buckets of acid over them. The boy started yelling, interrupting the showman's spiel; the crowd throwing things—beanbags, cups, candy boxes, anything they could lay hands on at Johnson, before they rushed the stage. One of the crew unchained the two Mechas and let them flee into the woods while the crowd rioted..

There was much more data Anderton found unnecessary. The boy-Mecha (if he was) seemed to be on a quest for something; Anderton thought he caught the words "Blue Fairy" on the boy's lips. The two Mechas headed out on their journey together, first to Rouge city, where the boy got the answer to his question at the Dr. Know information center there, and then to the Cybertronics building in what was left of Manhattan. But Bevins, in a 'copter borrowed from a friend in the ARM was following them and a Haddonfield police 'copter… Joe being pulled up to a tractor magnet on the underside of an amphibicopter with unfamiliar markings. Anderton glimpsed the Cybertronics logo on it at one point…. Joe alone in a room with a professorish, middle-aged man who seemed to be asking him questions. Bevins sneaking into the building, breaking into the room, assaulting the professor-type: Joe trying to pin Bevins's wrists; the larger man overpowering the slight Mecha. The doors opening and a cluster of police and security rushing in. Bevins escaping by a second door. There was a confusing section with the Weegee Wannabe sneaking around, armed with his camera, but what did that have to do with anything? Fletcher shoving the nuisance out of his way…Joe and Agatha finding each other in a room somewhere…Joe turning on the charm; the very thought of that brought a smile to Anderton's mind, thought he hardly dared show it…. Then Bevins rushing in and attacking Joe.

But in another image, all they could see was Joe's pellucid eyes, shimmering almost like emeralds lit by flames. What did that mean.

The transmission broke. Agatha stirred on the couch, arching her back, her breath coming harder.

He hand whipped up, grabbing at Anderton's with that grip that startled him, that day she grabbed his hand, just before the Leo Crowe incident. He nearly jolted at her touch.

"Did you see?" she asked, looking up at him. 

"I did," he said. To Rip, he added, "Did you get all that?"

Rip took the disk out of the burner and held it up. "It's all on here."

"Thanks…how much do I owe you?"

"Just enough for a fuel cell for my car," Rip said. "Is this gonna be enough? I mean, I remember them saying it took three Pre-Cogs to get a full report."

"Agatha was the strongest of the three. She's almost as good as two male Pre-Cogs put together," Anderton said.

"I hope you weren't tormenting that girl," Lara said, slightly teasing, slightly serious, when Anderton came to bed after Rip had gone.

"She'll sleep better knowing I can help her with this," he said.

"Or is she helping you?" Lara asked. "I think she wants something else."

"Why, has she discussed it with you?"

"No, just female intuition."

"We'll discuss this in the morning when I'm more alert," he said, burrowing under the covers.

"Any luck on the field research?" Anderton asked Fletcher next morning, as Fletcher checked his messages.

"Nah, I even snuck a peek into the pen during a lull," Fletcher said. "I didn't see nothing that looked like Joe."

"We still got time," Anderton said.

"Forget the Mecha," Stuyvesant growled. "If the Flesh Fair takes care of it for us, all the better: the case will close itself."

Anderton shook his head. "I think there's a lot more going on than meets the eye."

Stuyvesant grinned sourly. "All right, Sherlock Holmes, what do you propose to do?"

"Bevins's neighbor said she heard them fighting a lot. Maybe one of Ms. Bevins's co-workers knows something," Anderton said.

"Have it your way, Sherlock," Stuyvesant said, spreading his hands. "Knock yourself out."

"So how's your wife's sister?" Fletcher asked as he and Anderton drove to the Blockbuster Video where Samantha had worked.

"Okay, I fibbed: Agatha isn't a blood relative," Anderton admitted. "She's one of the Pre-Cogs."

"I knew it! That's why you got this lead on this," Fletcher cried. "So she tell you exactly what happened? It's Bevins that stuck his daughter, right? So let's go arrest him now—"

"Hold it, Fletch. Stuyvesant wouldn't approve if I did."

"He's jealous, that's all."

"True, but it's a highly unorthodox way to cover a case. I'm just using her visions as a guide, to look for the paper trail. That way, no one would ever know."

"Have it your way…Sherlock."

"Thanks a lot."

The Blockbuster Video was thinly occupied at that hour of the morning. A kid with buzz-cut hair was emptying the night drop box, while a dark girl wearing a forest-green blouse under her store regulation red polo shirt and khaki slacks checked out the one short guy customer's selections.

"_All the President's Men_ will be due back on Monday at noon," she said, almost more perfunctorily than usual.

"I know the drill," the short guy replied. Even from the back, Anderton recognized the Weegee Wannabe who'd gotten underfoot at the Shangri-La. The short guy turned around, confirming it. He looked up at Anderton.

"Oh, it's Officer Clear-the-Area," he drawled, looking up at him.

"Just covering all bases," Anderton replied, nonchalant.

"Watch it with this guy, Ms. Maguire," the short guy said over his shoulder to the clerk. "He looks harmless, but he's one pushy mother." He stepped away, stuffing his selection into his coat pocket. A bulge under his lapel looked like a pocket camera, but Anderton noticed it only as the goon went out.

"If this has to do with my parking tickets, I took care of those on the first of the month," said the clerk, whose nametag read "Holly".

"Actually, this has to do with Samantha Bevins," Anderton said, showing his badge and introducing himself and his partner. "Did you know her at all?"

"Sure, I trained her actually," Holly said. She looked around. "Rye?"

"Yeah?" the kid called back.

"Cover for me while I talk with these gents," Holly said, stepping out from behind the counter. She led them to the back room.

"I couldn't tell you out there: it isn't exactly family material…if you know what I mean," Holly said. "Sam used to spill her guts to me a lot. She couldn't afford a shrink, but I've been to so many I know the drill."

"Anything about her dad?" Anderton asked.

Holly rolled her eyes. "God, did she ever! The goon was _using_ her big time. He'd been feeling her up to say the least ever since she started wearing bras. She wanted out big time, but that wasn't so easy. And aside from that, she'd had it up to the eyes with his Mecha-bashing, ever since she was ten and her mother tried to leave, taking Sam with her. The story was that a malfunctioning bellhop Mecha in a hotel throttled Sam's mom. So since then, her father's turned into a one-man anti-Mecha crusade."

"You know how long Sam's been seeing this Mecha named Joe?"

Holly wagged her head. "Maybe six months, I wasn't keeping count. She was really nervous admitting to it. I mean, her dad hates those things. If he knew Sam was seeing something like Joe, let alone sleeping with one, he'd of killed her."

"She ever talk about her father threatening her?" Fletcher asked.

"Maybe not outright saying 'I'm gonna kill you', but he didn't deal with her gently when he caught her doing something."

"We won't use any more of your time, Ms. Maguire," Anderton said. "Thanks."

"Anything to help: I happen to have a soft spot for Joe myself," Holly replied. "Oh, and if that short goon with the camera should give you trouble, look me up." She brandished one fist. "I'll take care of him for yah: he's my ex-boyfriend, so I got dibs on busting his jaw or his camera, whichever comes first."

"I think we can handle him," Anderton said, smiling thinly.

"Yeah, the two of us 'ud make three of him," Fletcher said.

"You got permission to clonk him one for me, if you have to," she said, grinning, her eyes on Fletcher.

On that note, Anderton and Fletcher went out, heading for the car.

"I think she liked me," Fletcher said.

"You don't want to pursue that: her family has connections with the local chapter of the Irish mob in what's left of Hoboken," Anderton warned.

Before Fletcher could acknowledge his faux pas, they both noticed the short guy with the squashed-down Homburg, walking away from the back of their car, removing a memory card from the camera about his neck.

"Hey, what are you doing?!" Fletcher yelled, starting after the guy. Anderton caught his arm.

"None of that!" he cried.

"But he's spying on us!"

"Rule of thumb, Fletch: You don't argue with journalists unless they're interfering. That guy's got the wherewithal to smear us."

"You shoulda knocked his camera outta his paws!"

"That would only give him reason to screw our competence. He'd report it as a case of police brutality. I've had enough trouble with smear campaigns for things I had nothing to do with; the papers in D.C. tried to shoot my competency full of holes about the time I got out of Pre-Crime. I don't need to create a situation.

"Besides," Anderton added with a slight smile. "Our Weegee Wannabe might have been waiting for us to leave so he and go back in and pest his ex."

"So you're just letting him off the hook?"

"No. We'll keep him on the radar, but just in case he actually gives us trouble," Anderton said. "I've been at this long enough to know what you can't do in certain situations."

"And that's why you're the senior guy here," Fletcher said. "Okay, I get it."

To Lara's utter surprise, Agatha offered to help with the housework: washing dishes, carrying laundry downstairs to the laundry room. She was quiet in her odd, mysterious way most of the time, but when the two were making the bed, Agatha posed an odd question.

"It must be a wonderful thing to know a man's love, to feel his embrace," Agatha said, out of the blue as she helped Lara smooth out the spread.

"It is…but what makes you say this?" Lara asked, curious and a little confused.

Agatha ran her hand over the spread on the left side of the bed, closer to the window, the side where John slept. "He sleeps here… You love each other very much, even when life together has strained that love. Your troubles made you stronger…I have wondered what it must be like, to know a man's love for oneself, and to feel his touch."

"It's one of those things you can know only by feeling it for yourself. That's the only way," Lara said.

Agatha looked into her face, her pale blue eyes unblinking. "Can you listen?"

"Yes…but listen to what?"

"I have read in several books of folk wisdom that a woman must be a virgin if she is to have the gift of second sight. This gift I have is a terrible burden. People have sought to know why my brothers and I are pre-cognizant so that they might have this gift as well, for themselves. But they would not want it if they knew. I want it no longer. It weighs too heavily upon me. If a man embraced me in love, I would lose this talent perhaps, and then I could be free, as you are." Agatha looked down at John's pillow, then looked up into Lara's face. "Would it be possible for him to help me in this?" she asked this in all innocence, not a trace of lustfulness or sluttishness.

"No, Agatha," Lara replied, not batting an eyelash. She realized Agatha probably hadn't had the most thorough moral training, if any, so she knew hardly any better. "John and I promised each other to be faithful to each other. That's part loving someone in marriage."

Agatha accepted this with the same kind of simplicity in which she'd asked her question.

"There must be someone who can help you," Lara said. "What about the people taking care of you and your brothers?"

"There was one man, but he has no interest in me. He even laughed at me when I asked for his aid."

Lara patted Agatha's shoulder. "I'm sure there's someone out there who will take an interest in you for who you are and fall in love with you." But even as she said this, she knew somehow this might not happen.

"John, I think you may be somewhat mistaken about why Agatha asked for your aid," Lara said that evening as they settled down in bed for the night.

"Why? What makes you say that?" Anderton asked, poking his pillow into a different shape before settling his head on it.

"She told me she doesn't want to be pre-cognizant any more. She read about that old folk tale that a psychic woman has to remain a virgin or else she loses her gift."

"But that's just a folk saying: there's no logical way that losing her virginity will make her lose her pre-cognizance."

"We don't know that for a fact," she said. With a little laugh, she added, "She even asked me—utterly innocent, mind you—if she could, well, let's call it borrow you."

"She's asking the wrong question," he said, turning over on his side.

"I told her as much," Lara said. She fell thoughtfully silent for a second. "Did you ever have anything for her?"

"Like what?" he asked.

"Oh, you know what I mean."

"What, that I was attracted to her? I knew her as a part of the Pre-Crime system," he said. "Granted, I got a chance to see her as more than just a cog in the machine, and I found out who really killed her mother, but she meant little more than that."

"Just wanted to know y' still love me, babe," Lara said. She nestled closer to him. "But let's be sure about it, hey?" she nibbled his ear gently.

"Not tonight, hon: I gotta be up early to help trace and catch a rogue Mecha," Anderton replied. He turned over on his back and touched her face. "But…I'll make it up to you."

"You better," she twitted, poking him.

They didn't know Agatha hovered outside the closed door of their room, listening to their muffled voices, the exchange of words, the sultry texture of Lara's intonation.

Were these the sounds of the embrace? Would she ever hear a voice whisper to her like that? She crept away to her room silently.

To be continued…


	6. 5 Glass Eyes

+J.M.J.+

The Eyes Have It

A _Minority Report_/"A.I." crossover

By "Matrix Refugee"

Author's Note:

This was going to be a much longer chapter, but I thought I'd divide it into two sections, keep you all in suspense. I had to alter the events/dialogue of "A.I." slightly to get this to work, but I think my fellow Mecha-huggers can forgive me for it. Things really start to move from now on….

Disclaimer:

See the Prologue

Chapter V: Glass Eyes

"Any luck at the Flesh Fair?" Anderton asked Fletcher the next morning. "Or is that a dumb question?"

"Yeah, you'd have heard from me a lot sooner if I'd lucked out," Fletcher said.

"What's this about now, Sherlock?" Stuyvesant asked, approaching them.

"We're only trying to cover all bases: I've been covering the Flesh Fair, in case they should pick up the lover model and the   
Cybertronics kid," Fletcher explained.

Stuyvesant glared up at Anderton. "And this was your idea?"

"Yes," Anderton replied.

"What the h—l you tryin' to do, get yourself a promotion? Yer not gonna get my recommendation. And don't you start defendin' him, Fletch," Stuyvesant snapped. "You want that Mecha so bad, you go out an' comb the woods for it yerself."

"I had that in mind as well," Anderton replied.

Stuyvesant growled and stomped away to his office.

That morning, Anderton, Fletcher and a few others joined a search party still scouring the woods, looking for the David model. A few techs from Cybertronics had joined the search, as well as the Swintons, the young couple who had been testing the child-Mecha. The woods between Haddonfield and Barn Creek resounded with cries from the searchers: "David! You can come out now! We won't hurt you!" and "Hey, Joe, where'd you go?"

About one in the afternoon, the searchers paused for a rest and for the sandwiches and coffee which several members of a local church had brought to their field headquarters. Anderton caught up with the Swintons, whom he found sitting on a fallen tree trunk. The wife, a quietly pretty, dark woman in her early thirties, was having a hard time eating; her husband, an average-looking guy with slightly wavy dishwater blond hair, a shade older than his wife, kept coaxing her to eat.

"I just can't stop thinking about David," she said, trying not to sob. "It was cold last night. Will he be all right?"

"Of course. David was designed to take the cold better than a real child," the husband said. From his tone, he sounded like he was some kind of expert on Mechas.

"He IS a real child," the wife insisted. "He's just…different inside."

"David's a Mecha."

"He's no different than you or I, except for what he's made of."

"Monica, you're creating a scene."

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to overhear," Anderton interjected. The husband looked embarrassed. The wife, Monica, dropped her gaze.

"Hey, it's all right," Anderton said. "You're under a lot of stress right now. I know what you're going through."

Monica raised her eyes to his. "Do you? Have you ever lost a child?"

Swinton started to object, but Anderton caught his eye.

"I have. I lost my son Sean when he was five. We were at a public pool, boys' day out. He was out of my sight for just a second. Then he was gone, just gone. My wife blamed me for it. Then as time went on and we didn't hear from missing persons, she wanted to move on, get another license, have another child. But I held back. I wanted to find Sean first. It tore us apart. We're back together now, and we have a daughter now, but getting back to semi-normal wasn't easy. Sean would be twelve now, and we still have no idea what happened to him. But we still have each other. Don't let go; it's gonna be hard, but don't let go.

"My name's Anderton: I'm with homicide."

Monica's face went pale. "Homicide?"

"Yeah, I'm covering the murder of Samantha Bevins."

"Do you think…that Mecha did that?" she asked.

"We have reasons to believe that Mecha is innocent. David won't be in any harm from it."

Anderton started to step away. "Thanks, thanks for talking with us," Swinton said, offering his hand. Anderton shook it; Monica gave him a thin smile, but kept her hands hidden in her elbows.

The search parties came up empty-handed, except for a secretary Mecha that had gone astray. But they found no trace of David or of Joe.

Anderton went home to have a quick supper with his family. He found Agnes curled up in Agatha's lap as the older girl sat on the floor of the kitchen.

"Any luck finding the strays?" Lara asked him as he came in.

"No, 'fraid not," Anderton admitted.

Just after supper as he was helping Lara clear the table, Anderton's cellphone rang.

"Hey, Jack, you're gonna like to hear this," Fletcher's voice said over noisy music and a roaring crowd.

"Fletcher, where in heck are you?" Anderton asked.

"In my now usual seat at the Flesh Fair. I just snuck down to the pen: there's something in there that looks a lot like Joe, unless it's his brother, and there's a kid in there, too."

"Good God…have you called in a back up unit?"

"I'm gonna, just as soon as I get off here?"

"All right, I'm coming over." He hung up.

"Who was that?" Lara asked.

"That was Fletcher. "He's seen the two Mechas we're looking for," he said, going for his jacket. Lara caught his arm and hugged him.

"Take care of yourself, John," she said, and kissed him.

"I will," he promised as they let each other go.

"Anderton?" Agatha said. "I want to come."

He weighed the matter for half a second. "You can't come, it's too dangerous."

"You will need me."

"There could be trouble."

"You were in danger in Washington. I helped you then. I can help now."

"All right, but stay in the car, out of sight, understand?"

"I understand."

As they sped along the road to the fairgrounds, Anderton couldn't help remembering the rescues he'd made in Pre-Crime, the adrenalin rush of dashing to the scene of crime about to happen, of stopping someone in the very act of killing their spouse or their lover…or their child. Having Agatha so close only heightened the effect.

Agatha stayed put just as he had told her, for most of the way, but when they were almost there, Anderton heard her move behind him, on the floor.

"Anderton?"

"What?"

"When you get the young metal-man and the boy free, don't let them flee to the woods," she said.

"I won't. That's why I had Fletcher call in the back up."  

The festivities were just getting underway when Anderton arrived at the gates to the fairground, meeting up with the back up unit.

"I'm going in there first. This could take some time, so stand by until further notice," Anderton said, informing the two men and two women who comprised the back up.

"I hope you know what you're doing, Jack," one of the men, Castlebaum, said.

Anderton went in, alone, by the front gates. A ticket-seller, a beady-eyed slightly hard-bitten looking woman in a sweatshirt and baseball cap bearing the Flesh Fair logo, tried to stop him, but he held up his badge and ID. She stepped aside and let him in with a nervous smile as humorous as a skull's.

He quick-walked to the bleachers, scanning the screaming, rag-tag crowd that packed the tiers of seats, looking for Fletcher. He finally spotted his partner on the top row, close to the pen at the head of the ring. He climbed the steps of the section where he was, then stepped along the tier, trying not to step on anyone. He wedged himself in between Fletcher and a bulky teenager in a black tee shirt.

"Thank God you're here!" Fletcher yelled above the din, the crowd yammering and screaming, the heavy metal band on the staging directly above the pen blasting out an incoherent anthem. A motor roared in the middle of the ring as a leather-clad goon on a wolf-headed ATV, armed with a chainsaw plowed full tilt at a battered serving Mecha which stood chained to a block in the center of the ring. At the last second, the goon swerved the bike and sliced the Mecha in two at the waist. Sparks flew up amid spraying lubricants.

Anderton looked away, into the pen. He noticed several shadowy forms, a few closer to the bars of the pen more clearly visible. Then a spotlight panned over the front of the pen, flashing off the too-polished dermis and shiny eyes of three or four Mechas, including a tall, dark figure clad in lustrous black gone slightly iridescent under the madly flashing carnival lighting. It was looking away, at something small beside it, but it looked up. Black hair, and the eyes might be green…if it wasn't the long-lost Joe, it sure looked like him.

A younger man in a gray flannel shirt and jeans approached the cage and let himself in, armed with a scanner. Anderton couldn't make out what was going on, the spotlight had moved. A moment later, the tech came out, walking a little quicker, and went away.

The blowsy teenager with the orange hair, now clad in a blue sequined halter-top with white fringe falling past her red satin hot pants, came out, haranguing the crowd, stirring them up. She sounded like some insane cross between a cheerleader and Adolf Hitler. The tech, or whatever he was, came back a moment later, Johnson at his heels; they went into the cage, where Anderton made out their forms, moving about the small figure next to Joe.

A moment later, the cage door opened again. Johnson emerged, dragging out an eleven-year old boy—or at least, that's what it looked like until the light caught on his (its?) glossy skin. The boy clung to the other Mecha's hands, even as the dark young figure tried to peel him off, but Johnson dragged them both into the ring, into the spotlights.

Good God, they had Joe.

"Looks like they got our missing Mechas…plural," Fletcher said, as the crowd started to die down.

"Give 'em a minute," Anderton said, reaching for his two-way radio transmitter. "Castlebaum, move the escort into the perimeter. Get ready to receive."

Johnson and his cortege had reached the center of the ring, to a carnival bag-toss device. Two beefy ring goons chained the two Mechas to the middle of it. The taller Mecha, definitely Joe, slipped its arms protectingly about the smaller one, David. The child clung to his companion's arms as if for dear life, his too-bright eyes wide in fright, darting about the ring. For a moment, Anderton thought of Sean.

"Ladies and Gentlemun! Boys and Gerls and childthren of awl ages!" Johnson's throaty voice boomed over the loudspeakers. The crowd had gone almost deathly quiet. The teenaged girl in front of Anderton let out a whimper of fright.

"What'll they think awv next?" Johnson continued, gesticulating toward his two captives, their images amplified on the widescreens above the stands.

"See here," he said, gesturing at David, as he circled the platform. "A bitty bot! A tinker toy! A living doll! We all know why they made them: to shteal yer harts! To r'place yer awn childthren. This is the latest generation in a series of insults to human dignity. The next step in their grand scheme to phase out awl of God's little childthren. To make _us_ awbsolete."

With men like Bevins and Johnson, it might not be so bad if part of Orgakind was obsolete, Anderton thought, sourly.

"Anderton," Fletcher hissed, just above the murmurs of the audience.

"Not now."

As Johnson continued his harangue, several of the ring goons brought in several buckets of steaming acid.

"Meet the next generation of choild, designed to do just _thaht_! Behold the newest and most insidious threat to Orgakind!

"Do not be fooled by the artistry of this creation. No doubt thar was talent…genuine human talent…in the crafting of this simulator."

One goon had climbed the ladder behind the bag toss, while another, on the ground, handed him up one of the buckets of acid.

"Yet with the very first strike, you well see the big _LIE_ come apahrt!" Johnson boomed.

"Now, Anderton, dammit! NOW!" Fletcher hissed.

"One second more," Anderton said, Agatha's dream playing in his head.

"And it is not alone…with it comes yet anuther insult to mankind…mankind of flesh, and blood and bone…a metal love-god, a masculine form divoine…meant to shteal the harts awv yer woives and yer gerls, lurin' them away, a prostitute selling itself to this one, now to that one. But as you know, it was such a craithure as this that horribly mawled the dahghther of a prominent local citizen, leaving this gerl in a state nawt fit to descroibe befar a fam'ly awdience."

"Family audience be damned," Fletcher growled.

The goons had filled the buckets above the Mechas heads. Some of the acid dripped down, hitting the sleeve of Joe's jacket.

"Don't burn me! Don't burn me!!" the boy-Mecha shrieked. "I'm not Pinocchio! Don't make me die! I'm David! I'M DAVID!"

The crowd's murmurs grew louder, more agitated. "That thing is alive!"—"That's not a Mecha!"—"Let 'em go, Johnson!" one woman shouted, "Mecha don't plead for their lives! Whose child is that?"

Fletcher started to bound down the bleachers, but Anderton grabbed him by the back of his neck, pulling him back.

"Let me handle it! Follow me!" he snarled.

"I'm David! I have a Mommy!" the child screamed.

"It's built just like a boy to disarm us," Johnson interposed. "See how they imitate our emotions now." The showman stopped and picked up something on the ground. "Remember that no matter what perfarmance this sim puts on, that we are only demolishing artificiality." He held up the object he'd plucked from the ground. A red beanbag.

"Let him who is without sim…cast the first stone." With that, Johnson stepped to one side.

A pause. Anderton took his chance and started down to the field. As he and Fletcher hit the ground,something whizzed past their heads. A beanbag. Anderton watched it reach its target…

It missed the bagtoss completely, hitting Johnson on the forehead. Another clipped him on the nose. A third hit him in the gut.

Beanbags, cups and other things rained down on Johnson. The crowd, probably mistaking Anderton and Fletcher for their own kind, freed form the delusion, rushed the field. In the melee, Fletcher got knocked down. Anderton threw himself over his partner, covering him, keeping him from getting trampled.

"Castlebaum, call in the riot squad! They're tearing this place apart!" he shouted into his transmitter.

Anderton looked up to see the tech and the ring goons unchaining the two Mechas. Freed, the two fled the ring, heading for the west entrance, out through the gate, towards the woods. Anderton helping Fletcher up first, they ran after them. But though both men were in top condition—even Anderton, who was just past forty that year—they couldn't match speed with two things that couldn't tire.

The two Mechas, the boy and the young man, vanished into the shadows of the woods. From the look of things, if they kept up that pace, those bots would soon reach the New Jersey Turnpike on the other side.

"Well, Sherlock, now what do we do?" Fletcher asked, as they turned back.

"Let's go back to the car, first," Anderton said.

Inside the car, Anderton leaned back in the driver's seat, trying to refocus from the disappointment trying to distract him.

Without raising her head, Agatha peered out between the front seats.

Fletcher, glancing back, jolted at the sight of her. "Jack, we got a stowaway."

"I know, she's the famous Agatha Lively I've told you about," Anderton said, welcoming the distraction. "Agatha, this is a friend of mine. This is Carton Fletcher."

"Hello, Carton," she said.

"Hi. Uh…wow…you mean she's—I mean, you're, y' know, uh…" To Anderton, he hissed, "Ees-shay one of the ee-pray og-kays."

"Yeah, and don't let Stuyvesant know she's even in American airspace, or we'll both be facing suspensions."

"Does she know about…the Bevins case?"

"She's seen the whole thing."

"Wow." After a pause, he asked, "Okay, now where are we going and what are we doing?"

"I'm just figuring that out," Anderton said. "If you were a lover-Mecha on the lam, where would you go?"

"I dunno, some place where there's a lot of other lover-Mechas and do the needle-in-the-haystack thing," Fletcher said.

"And what's the closest place like that, besides _that_ street, because you're avoiding it since that's where all this bad trouble started in the first place?"

"That would have to be…Rouge City."

"That's what I had in mind. Okay, we got our majority report…Agatha, do you know anything?"

Agatha was quiet. "They run through a woods. They come to a road. The young metal man finds a car stopped by the roadside. He tells the boys who own the car where they can find girls of the same composition as he, that he and his companion, the boy, need conveyance there. They drive up a road to a bridge that enters a statue-woman's mouth."

"It's unanimous," Anderton said, starting the cruiser. "We're going to the last city your mama wants to hear you've been to, Fletch. And if she complains, tell her you went only to answer the call of service."

"Better put my libido on standby," Fletcher said.

As they started to pull out, something darted in front of them. Anderton stamped on the brake.

Someone knocked on the window. Anderton hit the power button for it.

The Weegee Wannabe stuck his thin, weaselly face in at them. "Look where you're going next time!" the short guy snapped.

"I'm sorry, you rushed by so—" The short guy stormed away before Anderton could finish his apology.

"I'm sure of it: that guy is spying on us," Fletcher said. "I don't care what you say."

"I'm beginning to think he is," Anderton said. "Agatha, do you know?"

Agatha said nothing as they pulled out of the fairgrounds onto the route. Then she spoke. "He is going to see the older man who accused the young metal man."

"Frazer Bevins," Anderton muttered, as they pulled onto the exit for the New Jersey Turnpike.

To be continued… 


	7. 6 Dazzled Eyes

+J.M.J.+

The Eyes Have It

A _Minority Report_/"A.I." crossover

By "Matrix Refugee"

Author's Note:

This chapter, and the next few, is more "A.I." than _Minority Report_; but the story also starts to speed up from this point on, so hang on for the ride. WARNING: mild violence.

Disclaimer:

See the Prologue.

Chapter VI: Dazzled Eyes

"You ever been to Rouge City, Jack?" Fletcher asked.

"Once, and I promised myself I'd never go back there unless I had to," Anderton said, keeping his eyes on the road.

"That bad? Why'd you go anyway?"

"I went for the ride with some friends back in college. And yes, it was that bad. I spent most of the time in the hotel room."

That was no exaggeration: he'd never been hit on so many times in the course of one evening. It had seemed as if every three seconds, another female Mecha in an outlandish get-up—even a couple male ones, though he certainly didn't want _that_—was at his elbow, offering him a good time. He simply wasn't interested: he'd just met Lara at that time, and he'd decided she was one girl worth saving himself for. So he'd nipped back to the hotel room and spent the evening channel surfing—only to find that about half the stations they carried broadcasted porno flicks.

"Oop! Anderton's in the zone," Fletcher said.

"What zone?" Agatha asked.

"When this guy's reeeallly concentrating or something, he gets really quiet," Fletcher said. "Not that he's a chatter box the rest of the time."

Agatha didn't reply to this. "Hey, Jack," Fletcher asked in a low voice. 

"What?" Anderton replied.

"Is this girl a little…y' know…hoo-hoo?"

"She can seem that way, but she's harmless," Anderton said. "It's just how the drugs her mother was doing when she was pregnant with Agatha affected how her brain grew."

They turned off the Turnpike onto the Rouge City exit. They crossed the Delaware over a length of cantilever bridge which arched slightly toward the city gates in the form of a vast sculpture shaped like a woman's head, mouth agape, the road running right into the orifice, the whole thing lit with rose and blue floodlighting. It was all Anderton could do to keep from closing his eyes to slits.

"Eeee, we're gonna get swallered!" Fletcher whimpered comically.

"Well, once we get in, don't let it happen.

A little voice had insinuated itself into his mind. Maybe Agatha's desire could be served here. There were plenty of lover models like Joe who would gladly oblige her. And they would take no notice of her plain features and cropped hair either.

No. No, it couldn't be that way, he thought.

They turned onto the main thoroughfare of the city, which had been built on two levels: the lower deck was mostly residential, but the upper deck served the tourists who flocked from all over the country, even from all over the world.

They found a parking garage and deposited the car there, but not before Anderton took a few precautions.

"Agatha, stay in the car and stay down," he told her. "Don't let _anyone_ see you."

"I will not," she said, already curled up on the floor, with Lara's raincoat covering her.

Anderton turned to Fletcher. "Let's go."

They got out and headed for the escalator hub at the center of the lower deck.

"Now stay close to me and don't talk to anyone or anything," Anderton warned, as they rode the escalator. "If anything goes after you, just ignore it."

"Yes, Uncoo Jack," Fletcher squeaked in a fake little-kid voice.

The city hadn't changed in the twenty years since he'd first been there, as he discovered when they stepped off the escalator: garish neon lighting on every building, holographic advertising projected against the night sky, buildings with domes like women's breasts—or shaped like women, for that matter—crowds of people jamming the streets.

And Mechas. It seemed as if every other passerby was a Mecha: females, males, a few that Anderton couldn't place as either, dressed in every kind of scanty or gaudy outfit imaginable. He scanned the crowds, looking for anything that looked like Joe.

"How are we ever gonna find our boy in this crowd?" Fletcher groaned, over the shouts of the street vendors and the raucous jazz that blared from the open doors of a nearby club.

"Good question," Anderton said.

They walked along the main boulevard, scanning the crowd.

Fletcher edged in a little closer to Anderton. "Too bad we couldn't bring the oracle along. I bet she'd know exactly where our boy is at."

"That's quite possible." When the Pre-Crime shock troops had been following him and Agatha through a shopping mall in D.C. after he'd swiped her from the lab, she'd had enough information to keep them from getting caught. She'd told him to stop and wait, while a balloon vendor blocked the shock troops' sight line, effectively keeping the both of them from being spotted.

"Want me to go get her?" Fletcher asked.

His first thought was no, then yes popped into his head.

"Go ask her if she knows anything about where we can find Joe," Anderton said, finding a compromise.

"Aw, she don't get to help?"

"We can't risk her," Anderton replied.

"Okay," Fletcher said, and scurried away.

Anderton set his back against a kiosk with a map of the city and kept a strict watch on the crowd for a male lover-Mecha, black hair, green eyes, about twenty-five by appearances, weighing around 130 pounds.

He spotted a figure that he guessed was Joe. He got a better look and realized it was their boy. But then he noticed David was walking with him, hand in hand. He hazarded a double take: no, his eyes weren't fooling him. What on earth was the child doing here in an awful, God-forsaken place like this?

The incongruous pair headed for a Dr. Know information center. At that moment, Fletcher returned, alone. Anderton had had a brief concern that Fletcher, purely well intentioned, might have brought her along.

"She says they're going someplace to find the answers to the little guy's questions."

"Well, they just went to call on the good Dr. Know," Anderton said.

"And there's something about a Blue Fairy, but I couldn't make heads or tails of it," Fletcher reported.

"The Blue Fairy, as in _Pinocchio_?"

"I guess: it's been years since I saw the movie."

"I should have saved you from making the trip," Anderton said, as they headed for the door to the information center.

"Yeah, but if I hadn't gone, you might not have spotted our boys."

They went inside. Several of the cubicles were occupied, but the foyer waiting room was empty. They kept watch of the room from off to one side.

"So you ever, uh, have anything for Agatha?' Fletcher asked discreetly. "I mean, you and Lara were separated at one time, right?"

"It's funny you should ask that," Anderton said. "Lara asked me the same question."

"Uh oh! She worried?"

"No, just curious. There was never anything between Agatha and me. It was purely professional after a fashion. She's young enough to be my baby sister."

"How old is she, just for curiosity's sake?"

Anderton calculated for a second. "She's twenty-five."

"Wow. She doesn't seem it," Fletcher said. "She seems older, I mean, younger—I mean, both, uh…"

"There are gaps in her growth. She's intellectually mature beyond her years, more than the both of us put together; but emotionally she's about ten or twelve. Her IQ is off the chart, but she seems simple because she doesn't know how to relate to us. So if she seems withdrawn, it's because of her condition."

"Kinda like autism."

"It's similar, but it doesn't have the mental impairment that goes with autism."

"Wow," Fletcher said, amazed.

One of the cubicle doors opened and David bounded out, striding for the door, his Teddy on his arm.

"David?" a voice called from inside the cubicle. Joe hurried out, stepping in front of the smaller Mecha, blocking the child's path.

"We gonna tap him?" Fletcher asked.

"Give him a minute," Anderton said. The older Mecha seemed to be counseling the younger about something. Watching them, Anderton thought of an older brother chiding a younger brother, or even…a father counseling his son.

"What's with the delay tactics?" Fletcher asked.

"It's called timing," Anderton said.

David stepped around Joe and headed for the door, Joe just behind him.

Anderton stepped out from their nook near the door, about to approach the two Mechas. But the door suddenly opened from the outside. Anderton looked out, following Joe's suddenly perplexed gaze.

A Rouge City security guard and Treves, one of the Haddonfield officers, approached the open door, closing in on Joe.

"What the--?" Fletcher started.

The plaza before the information center was jammed with police amphibicopters and an anti-grav transport. Stuyvesant stepped out of the crowd of officers and guards.

"I thought I told you to drop it, Anderton," Stuyvesant said. Treves and the guard escorted Joe to the transport. "What brought you here so quick?"

"We could say the same about you," Fletcher snipped.

"I just had a hunch," Anderton put in quickly.

"Well, with or without your hunch, the case is closed," Stuyvesant said, following the group approaching the transport.

David. They'd let him out of their sight. Anderton looked around the plaza: no sign of the small Mecha in the crowd of tourists and freaks gathered on the fringe of the plaza, the usual crowd that gathers when an arrest is being made. The security guards tried to disperse them, "Go on about your business: there's nothing for you to see here."

On the peripheral, Anderton detected movement near one of the amphibicopters, but he couldn't tell what it was.

The amphibicopter suddenly lurched into motion, spinning madly, knocking over the tables of the café nearby and sending the crowd scattering with shouts and screams.

"Someone stop that copter!" Stuyvesant roared. The tail of it swung around and hit him in the back of the head.

Anderton hit the deck, pulling Fletcher down. The 'copter veered wildly around the plaza, hovering just a few feet off the ground. Anderton felt the breeze from it on his hair as the craft swooped right over him and Fletcher, just missing them both.

The 'copter crashed into the waiting transport, turning it over. Treves and Joe fell out, Treves hitting his head on the doorpost. Joe fell clear of the craft, right side up, startled, but no worse for the wear. The Mecha got up, its eye following the 'copter. An odd smile crossed its face. He darted after the vehicle, matching speed with it as it cruised along the ground. The canopy opened and the Mecha climbed aboard.

Anderton had just risen to his knees when he saw the 'copter lift off the ground and shoot toward the sky. He drew his service pistol and aimed for the thrusters. But the craft rose to fast and his shot clipped a building. The stolen 'copter rose. It clipped an anti-grav sign overhead. Debris rained down. Anderton dropped, covering a still frightened Fletcher.

When the clattering and tinkling stopped, Anderton got up, looking into the sky. Gone.

Fletcher stood up, his gaze following Anderton's. "Now what do we do, Sherlock?" he asked, gravely.

"Let's go back to the car first," Anderton said.

Agatha lay curled up on the floor of the car, listening for Anderton and his friend. She wondered if the young man might be willing to help her in her effort to be freed of this burden of foresight. But he seemed too much in awe, even a little scared of her, like everyone else. That was how most men usually reacted to her. They either saw her as some strange freak of nature, or they just ignored her because she was not much to look at. She knew she wasn't pretty. She had once compared her reflection to several classic photos of famous actresses from the past. She didn't look half as pretty as any of them.

She let images of the young man who was not a man pass through her mind's eye. Perhaps he could do for her what she sought. He seemed made specific for this task.

She sensed an ache in her chest she had never felt before, a pain that was not a pain. The very image of the young metal man, in her mind's eye much more sharp and clear than it would be to most people, seemed to heighten and yet to sweeten her pain. She wanted to reach out and touch that smooth-looking cheek, wondering if it would feel as smooth and warm under her touch as her own.

She ran her hand over her own cheek, feeling the softness of her skin, wondering if his touch on her face would feel like that.

To be continued….


	8. 7 Eyes Wide Shut

+J.M.J.+

The Eyes Have It

A _Minority Report_/"A.I." crossover

By "Matrix Refugee"

Author's Note:

Yes, I know "Eyes Wide Shut" is the title of Stanley Kubrick's official last movie. Yes, I know Tom Cruise was in it. I just liked the title and I wanted something really odd but still in keeping with the "eyes" theme that I've used for the chapter titles. This chapter forms the grand climax, bringing together all the main players, with a couple major epiphanies, one of which was inspired by a major similarity I found in both MR and A.I., and also what is that "Weegee Wannabe" really up to? WARNING: Mild slash ahead (Bevins/Joe—my wacky friend Ruby Tuesday came up with the idea for the ultimate "'A.I.' pair who definitely should NOT be slashed".)

Disclaimer:

See the prologue

Chapter VII: Eyes Wide Shut

It was well past midnight, into the wee hours of the morning when Anderton and Fletcher returned to Haddonfield. Stuyvesant had been airlifted to a hospital in Camden. The EMTs didn't expect the lieutenant to last the night, much less survive.

"The case is in your hands until I can appoint another supervisor," Rance, the chief of police told Anderton over the phone.

"You sure you can trust me with it?" Anderton said, facetiously.

Rance chuckled gently. "Of course I trust you. You're the best man for it. I don't know how you do it, but I'm impressed."

"I just follow my nose."

"Well, keep following it, you're red hot this time. Do you honestly think that Mecha killed Ms. Bevins?"

"No, sir."

"That makes two of us; I'm glad you're covering this case."

"So what's the verdict?" Fletcher asked Anderton after he got off the phone.

"Rance is letting us keep working on this case," Anderton said.

"Hot dog!" Fletcher cried. "So now what do we do?"

"Get ready to do some more traveling: We're going to Manhattan."

"You taking Agatha?"

Anderton hesitated. "Yeah."

His next step was to contact the Dr. Know information center in Rouge City and have them send up the recording of David's session with the good doctor. If the boy-bot was looking for the Blue Fairy, maybe the answer would give them an idea where to go. The tech in charge of recording the sessions was reluctant to turn over the files, but Anderton gently threatened to press charges for obstruction of justice. He exactly where they were going, but he needed to set up a scrim first, in case Rance got suspicious.

The tech finally emailed the file, which Anderton reviewed with Berube, the tech expert, looking over his shoulder. The boy-bot's first few questions came up with abortive answers, but his last question, "How can the Blue Fairy make…a robot…into a real, live boy?" turned up an even stranger answer: "At the end of the world, where the lions weep."

"Okay, what in heaven or hell does that mean?" Anderton asked.

"A lot of Mechas refer to Manhattan as 'the end of the world', since a lot of their numbers tend to vanish once they venture into it. And the weeping lions…must be the Cybertronics building there. They get four, five way-larger than life-size weeping lion statue-fountains outside the front entrance."

As Berube described it, Anderton saw the image in his mind's eye, as Agatha had seen it, as he had reviewed it.

"In that case, care to do a little more traveling, Fletch?" Anderton asked.

Fletcher yawned. "After I get a few winks. This is gonna kill me."

"You can rest in the transport," Anderton said.

Anderton went out to call Lara and let her know what was going on. And to smuggle Agatha into the anti-grav transport.

They assembled their escort; Anderton personally briefed the squad on their procedure.

"We are only holding this Mecha for questioning, namely, a neural cube scan. So, anyone who damages this Mecha is answerable. Whatever your feelings toward Mechas, he isn't a suspect. We have strong reasons to believe he was simply in the wrong pace at the wrong time. Any questions?"

The squad glanced at each other among themselves, but no one ventured anything.

"Good, let's roll. We've lost too much time already."

Agatha lay hiding in an empty storage locker aboard the transport, listening for anything that sounded like Anderton and his colleagues coming. She heard someone rustling about in the cockpit. She peered out carefully so as not to be seen.

Someone had a light out there, which they shone about the compartment. Then suddenly the lid of the locker flew open.

The light shone into her eyes, blinding her. Whoever it was grabbed her by the front of her shirt and dragged her out onto the decking and held her down with himself.

"You're her, aren't you? You're the Pre-Cog girl John Anderton used to make his grand escape from Pre-Crime, aren't you?" a man's raspy voice asked, behind the light.

"I am, " she admitted, not knowing what else to say. She recognized the voice as the voice that had snapped at Anderton and his friend as they left the fairgrounds much earlier that night.

"So did they catch the Mecha?" the stranger asked. He kept his face hidden behind the light, but she made out his shadow, a lean, small-shouldered form.

"No."

"Ah, too bad. Then where is he?"

Images panned through her head: Tall buildings rising up from an ocean, battered, rusted, ruinous. A flying craft swept by, bearing the young metal-man and the boy.

"They are in a city sunk in the sea. Lots of tall buildings…a hand with a torch."

"Manhattan…Good girl. You've been very useful." The light went out. He suddenly leaned over her, pressing his mouth on hers in a dry, closed-mouth kiss. He let her go just as suddenly. "Now, not a word of this to anyone, y' hear?"

The light in the compartment went on.

Anderton opened the hatch of the transport, but he held out his hand behind him, stopping the others from climbing in.

Agatha lay on the floor eyes wide open, startled. The Weegee Wannabe, kneeling over her, looked up, his snide face quivering with nerves. For a moment, Anderton feared the worst, but he realized the small man was merely pinning her to the floor with his knees and elbows, his body well clear of hers.

"That does it!" Fletcher yelled, crawling under Anderton's arm. He grabbed the intruder by the neck and shoved him up against a wall of the compartment.

"What are you doing here?" Anderton demanded.

"Just collecting information," the Weegee Wannabe said. He darted a look at Agatha, then looked up at Anderton. "Though it looks as if YOU'VE been up to a little info-gathering yerself. You got something for this girl."

"Gad, so that's why you knew so much about this case, Jack," said Drolesky, one of the squad members. 

"She had visions of the Bevins murder," Anderton said. "I've only been using them as a guide." He meant this as much for the intruder as he meant for the squad.

To the reporter, he added, "I don't know why you're here, but let me say this: I'm going to have Fletcher let you go and I want you to walk away from here quietly. Whoever you're leaking this information to, don't go near them, or I may have to arrest you for interfering with an investigation."

The Weegee Wannabe gave him a nervous smile. "I can go along with those terms," he said.

"All right. Fletcher, let him go." Anderton ordered.

Fletcher released the reporter. Anderton stepped aside, letting the small man climb down from the transport. With a sidelong glance back at Agatha, the reporter sidled off into the night.

"I say you shoulda let me smash his camera," Fletcher argued.

"And have him file police brutality charges?" said Phuong, their pilot. "Not my idea of fun."

"So this is her?' asked Canfield, another squad member, looking at Agatha. "This is the Pre-Cog?"

"This is Agatha," Anderton said. He knew this would have happened sooner or later. It amazed him that it hadn't happened sooner.

Agatha looked up at the others with uncertainty, almost frightened.

"I guess she's gonna be on the scene now," said Drolesky, as they started to climb aboard, while Phoung started the generators.

"Hey, Stuyvesant's out of commission," said Freder, climbing in beside Anderton. "We can keep our mouths shut about it."

"There's no time to decide that," Anderton said. "We gotta run."

There was nothing more to be said about Agatha. They let her sit on the bench with the rest of them as Phuong flew them to Manhattan. Fletcher took a nap, but Anderton was too keyed up. It was like the old days in Pre-Crime, almost, or at least the mounting adrenalin rush felt the same. And Agatha was helping them.

Well after dawn, the broken towers of Manhattan loomed up before them, out of the water.

Phuong flew them into the heart of the old financial district of the city. They kept on the lookout for a building with weeping lion fountains.

Agatha edged close to the front seats, keeping low but looking out through the windscreen. She looked up at one massive structure, more solidly constructed than the derelict buildings around it.

"Circle this building," she said

"What she say?" Drolesky asked.

"This is the place where they have him," she said. Phoung brought the copter around, circling the building Agatha had pointed out. Even over the whine of the thrust generators, they could hear the rumble of falling waters.

Anderton looked up. They came in low, passing by a large shape masked by a curtain of falling water. He looked up further as they passed a second form like it, a huge molded simulstone figure, a massive lion, water gushing from its open mouth and running from its eyes.

Phuong raised the nose of the 'copter, heading for the aircraft shelter halfway up the face of the building.

When they had landed, there were already two other 'copters there, one mid-sized, the other a two man ornithopter, clearly a private one.

Bevins arriving at Cybertronics…

Phuong opened the hatch. Anderton turned to Agatha. "You'll have to stay here," he said.

She stood up. "I want to come."

"No, this could be dangerous," Anderton warned.

"You were in great danger in Washington."

"Listen, we're in trouble right now because you're here. But if you get hurt, it's gonna get worse for us both," Anderton said.

She sat down on the bench without another word.

Anderton looked at the rest of his squad. "All right; let's move."

He led them deeper into the aircraft shelter, up three steps to a set of automatic doors, which opened for them. They stepped up to a blacked-glass door in which had been stenciled a few lines of William Butler Yeats.

"Come away, O human child,

To the water and the wild,

With a faery hand in hand

For the world's more full of weeping

Than you can understand."

He drew in a long breath and reached to open the door.

They stepped through into a laterally running hallway. Directly in front of them, a set of glass doors opened into a library in which several service droids were sweeping up what looked like fragments of glass. Anderton turned away and led the squad down the hallway.

They reached a receptionist's desk at which sat a blonde young woman, pretty in an ordinary way. She looked up at them with unblinking eyes. And her skin was too glossy.

"Did anyone come through with a tall, dark young male Mecha with green eyes, might have been with a little boy about eleven?" Anderton asked.

The Mecha-girl looked at them calmly. "I cannot give out that information."

Anderton reached into his belt, drew out his service pistol and set it on the desk top, covering it with his hand.

"How 'bout now?"

The girl-Mecha looked at the gun, then looked at them. "Please come with me," she said, rising.

She led them down a hallway, past several offices. Two male voices made themselves heard, one practically shouting, the other much more calm. Anderton recognized Bevins's voice, the louder of the two. They followed the sound to the end of the hallway.

The Mecha receptionist tapped on the door. The voices fell silent. "Come in?" asked an academic-sounding voice, the one that had not been raised.

The girl opened the door and stepped back, letting Anderton, Fletcher and Canfield through.

The room was empty except for a scattering of office furniture and two men, Bevins was one, the other was a moderately tall, professorish looking man in his late fifties, thinning dark blonde hair, calm gray-blue eyes set in a square, care-worn face.

"Professor Allen Hobby?" Anderton said, showing his badge and ID. "We're with the Haddonfield police. We need to speak to you about a Mecha that may be in your facility."

Bevins looked at Anderton with a smirk. "Maybe you'll have better luck getting him to give up that bot," he said.

"Could you step outside for a few moments, Mr. Bevins, while I speak with these gentlemen?" Dr. Hobby replied.

"You don't have to tell me twice," Bevins sneered and turned to leave, pushing past Anderton as he stepped out.

"What can I do for you, gentlemen?" Hobby asked them, his gaze meeting Anderton's

Agatha sat alone in the transport, letting images pass through her mind: the young metal-man and the boy entering the building; the boy finding another boy very like himself; the first boy striking the second in the face with a table lamp, revealing the second boy to be like him inside; the metal-man fleeing from the building, out to the transport; a tall man with sad blue eyes speaking to the boy, then leaving the room, as if he would fetch someone else; the boy sitting alone on a ledge outside the window, then falling into the waters below; the metal-man coming after the boy in the transport, plucking him off the sea-bottom and bringing him up to the surface; an unmarked amphibicopter hovering over the spot where they sat, a sudden strong force—from a magnet—plucking the metal man away even as the other 'copter started to descend into the water; the people in the second 'copter bringing the metal man into the building, where the man with the sad eyes spoke to him for a long time, asking many questions.

One image lingered, that of the metal man alone in a room, strapped to a heavy chair, alone.

He shouldn't have to be held like that, she thought. She got up and went deeper into the building.

"We have strong reasons to believe that Mecha is completely innocent," Anderton said.

"We've confirmed that through a verbal interrogation," Dr. Hobby said. "We're just going to perform a cube scan to corroborate Joe's spoken testimony. But we were unfortunately interrupted by Mr. Bevins arriving."

"We'd like to be present when you run that scan," Anderton said. "After which, we're taking Joe back to Haddonfield. To return him to his owner."

"I'm afraid I can't allow all that," Hobby said.

"Why the heck not?" Fletcher demanded.

Hobby shook his head. "You don't realize what's going on. Belladerma J-01229s have been known for their idiosyncratic behavior before, but Joe is exceptionally so. We have reasons to believe some of David's programming might have, so to speak, infected Joe's programming."

"What makes you say that?" Anderton asked.

"Mechas don't form relationships, they don't reach out to help someone when their own integrity is at risk. Joe could have just kept running after he escaped from the Flesh Fair, hid in the woods, maybe run to Canada. But he didn't. He chose to make David's quest his own."

"But still, we have to continue our investigation," Anderton said. "We have to be sure Joe didn't kill Samantha Bevins."

"Her father would like to know that as well," Hobby said, something flickering in his eyes.  

"We also have reasons to believe Frazer Bevins killed his own daughter and pointed the blame at Joe," Anderton said. "We've found he has connections with several anti-Mecha activist groups."

"In that case, it might not be safe to keep him in Haddonfield," Hobby warned. 

Agatha stepped through the door opening into the library. She looked about her. The service droids at work sweeping the floor looked at her, but did not take much notice of her.

She walked through the library, toward the inner room, which looked like some cross between a laboratory and a conference room.

On several tall metal stands along the perimeter of the room hung a row of small figures. At first she took them for human beings, but she realized they were not, they were replicas of the small boy robot that had accompanied the young metal man. stepping down the three steps that separated the library from the inner room, she looked about her, looking down the length of the room.

"Hallo?" said a young man's light voice with a British accent.

The image of the young stranger strapped into a heavy chair passed through her mind's eye. She looked down to see him before her, about twenty feet away.

He had turned his head, looking right up at her. She stepped forward, approaching him slowly.

"Who are you?" he asked, friendly, simply desiring to know who she was.

"I am Agatha," she said, coming up to him. She knelt to his level. The padded restraints held in his ankles and wrists, with a larger one across his chest. "And you are?"

"They call me Joe," he replied. He looked at her, his green eyes unblinking, calm, curious, scanning up and down her face. She looked right into his eyes, feeling his gaze meet hers. His eyes warmed and a soft smile curved his mouth. She returned the smile, feeling a tremble pass through her limbs. Warmth suffused her skin, and she knew she was blushing. She had thought Anderton was a nice-looking man, but this young stranger looked far, far better. He had that thing called beauty, that quality that eluded her.

"Have you come to help me?" Joe asked. He glanced down at the restraints and looked up at her face.

"I have," she said.

He looked at the restraints again. "Can you free me from these bonds?" His eyes flicked up to meet hers, looking at her through his long lashes.

"I think I can," she said. She reached down and found the locking pin holding the restraints at his ankles. Pulling the pin, she undid the strap. She sat up on her heels and undid the clasps at his wrists, then she reached in and undid the straps across his chest. Her hand brushed the silvery shirt he wore and she felt his chest underneath. She withdrew her hand quickly and rising, stepped back as he stood up. He lifted onto his toes and turned, the gleaming black skirts of his long jacket swirling.

"So, Agatha, are you with the people who have been wracking my brains?" he asked.

"No, I have come with the police," she replied.

His eyes went cold with fear or concern. He stepped back from her. "Am I still in bad trouble?"

"No, they only wish to know if you did not kill the girl Samantha Bevins."

"I did not kill her. An Orga man did that hideous deed."

"I know you did not."

He looked at her, his high smooth brow furrowing with questions. He cocked his head. "How then do you know this?"

"I can see things that have not yet happened."

"And how can you do this? Are you a psychic?"

She wagged her head. "I have dreams. I have terrible nightmares of things happening. Murders, killings. I want it to end. The people who care for me give me medicine to help me sleep better at night, but it does not stop the images."

"They trouble you, and well they should."

She nodded. "I think that you can help me."

He cocked his head. "I? What can I do that would help you?"

"Ah, there, y' are, you abomination!" said a man's slightly husky voice.

They both looked up. Agatha gasped.

The man called Bevins, the man who had cut the girl's throat in the hotel room, the same man who had then accused Joe stood there on the steps leading down into the room. He stepped toward them.

Joe stepped forward, pulling Agatha behind him. She clung to his arm.

"We're not going to destroy Joe. We only want to see what's in his cube. It's the last bit of evidence we need to arrest Frazer Bevins," Anderton said.

"It's not easy for me to give him up." Hobby's gaze turned toward the window. "He's the last link we have to David," he added.

"What's with making a kid Mecha anyway?" Fletcher asked. "What's the point?"

"It's part of an experiment we started two years ago, an attempt to bridge the metaphysical gap between Orga and Mecha. We were creating a robot that can have genuine emotions, not just emulated emotion," Hobby explained.

Anderton watched Hobby's eyes. Something was just not right there. Something hid behind those eyes, barely concealed, barely revealed. Anderton recognized the expression, the shadow that lurked there. He'd seen the very same look in his own eyes, gazing back from the mirror first thing in the morning, a look he'd tried not to see in the weeks and months and years after Sean's disappearance.

And because of this inner turmoil which had generated this shadow, he'd tried to hide from it in his work. He realized the gap between himself and Hobby was not so wide as he had thought. Promoting Pre-Crime to prevent other people from suffering as he had suffered. Building a child Mecha to help others—and himself—stay up their hearts after the loss of a child.

"So what is it going to be?" Anderton asked. "Are you going to let us have him?"

"Let's see what the scans show first," Hobby said. "I have him down the hallway in the main office."

He led them out into the hallway.

"What are you doing with that girl, bot?" Bevins demanded.

"We were merely acquainting ourselves with each other," Joe replied.

Bevins's yellow eyes went to Agatha's face. "Did he do anything to you, girl? Did he lay a hand on you? Feel you up any way?"

"He has not," she said. "And if he had, I would want him to touch me."

"If you want that, you know where to get it. Hasn't that young whippersnapper from the police done the right thing by you?"

"He is married to another woman. They love each other very much," Agatha said.

"In that case, I'll help wean you off this thing," Bevins said, stepping around Joe and reaching for Agatha.

"Do not lay a hand on her," Joe said, almost threatening, stepping closer to Bevins.

The man turned to Joe, a cruel smirk contorting his face, his lips curling back from his teeth. "And since when do things like you give orders to Orgas."

"She does not want you," Joe countered. With a slight smile, he added, "She wants me."

"And that's the whole point of me getting her away from you," Bevins said, stepping toward Joe, backing him toward the wall. "I spent ten years of my life trying to warn people about how dangerous you things are. You poisoned my daughter's mind and heart against Orga men. You warped her desires, turned them unnatural. And now she's dead. Because I found out about you and her: it drove me so man I didn't know what I was doing, and I killed her."

Joe had backed up nearly against the wall. His eyes darted about as if he sought an exit. Agatha looked toward the door. Where was Anderton? She wanted to run for him, even though she knew he and the police were coming, along with the man who had built the boy robot.

"So you think you're better than a real man, eh?" Bevins said. "We'll see about that."

Bevins suddenly lunged at Joe, forcing his back up against the wall so that the young metal-man's arms got pinned behind his back. Bevins unfastened the front of Joe's trousers.

"Whatcha got under there, eh?" Bevins asked. "I bet they gave you more than I got…Dammit, they did!" Agatha looked away toward the door. Where was Anderton?!

"Don't touch me," Joe said, almost pleading. "If you ask this of me, I cannot oblige you."

"I bet you can, you dirty little man-whore," Bevins snarled, reaching in.

Joe's face twisted with pain, his eyes rolling up. His lips parted in a soundless cry of pain. He trembled, but the large man had him pinned.

Something like white-hot fire exploded in Agatha's breast. All those years of seeing images of other people killing had not affected her. She'd never fully grasped why anyone would take the life of another, but now she understood.

She hated Bevins.

She threw herself at the older man, punching him, raining hard blows on his back and shoulders.

Bevins released Joe and whirled round to face her, his bloodshot eyes blazing. Behind him, Joe slid to the floor in an awkward posture, knees up, back against the wall.

"You're messing with the wrong man, girl," Bevins said, drawing a knife from his coat pocket.

Something in the shadows of the room wing-clicked. Bevins looked around.

The short, ugly man with the camera stood on a chair in the back of the room. Bevins rushed at him, but the smaller man dove behind a table.

The double doors into the room flew open. Anderton and the other policemen rushed in.

"Oh, the Mecha-hugging cop again," Bevins drawled. He threw himself at Anderton, who kicked the knife from his hand. Anderton grabbed him by one shoulder and started pulling the older man's hands behind his back, trying to handcuff him. "Frazer Bevins, you're under arrest for the murder of your daughter Samantha Bevins," he said. He was tempted to add, 'And for the future murder of Agatha Lively.'

Bevins grappled with him, lifting Anderton off his feet. Fletcher and the others tried to surround them, but Bevins managed to shake Anderton off.

"You'll never take me alive!" Bevins screamed. He rushed toward the outer room, heading for the landing shelter.

Anderton ran after him. Fletcher and the others trailing him one step behind. Anderton drew his gun, ready to shoot out the anti-grav generators on the amphibicopters. Bevins ran past them toward the ledge. Realizing what Bevins was up to, Anderton holstered his gun and ran flat out after him.

Bevins stopped on the edge of the parapet and turned to Anderton.

"Bevins, this doesn't have to end like this," Anderton said. "You don't want to do this."

Bevins looked at Anderton, eyes devoid of all emotion, unblinking. "Down fiber, up flesh!" he said, cold-voiced, utterly devoid of emotion.

Before Anderton could grab at him, Bevins heeled over the edge. The man free fell, straight down. Deeper in the shelter behind them, someone let out a death yell from the gut, the unspoken cry on Bevins's slack lips. Anderton glanced back to see Agatha, face contorted, screaming, Joe supporting her, his face utterly baffled. Anderton looked back, over the ledge. The water broke under Bevins, fountaining up. The waves closed over him with hardly a ripple to mark the spot.

Anderton heard a series of rapid wing-clicks nearby. He looked to his right to see the Weegee Wannabe standing nearby, camera in hand, aimed down to the water.

"Hey, you can't do that!" Fletcher yelled, starting after the reporter.

"Fletcher, leave him alone!" Anderton ordered.

"Yeah, never heard of freedom of the press?" the reporter snapped.

"Who are you and what are you doing here anyway?" Anderton demanded.

"Halloran McGeever, of the Haddonfield _Sentinel_, amongst others," the short guy said.

"So what the hell brings you here?" Anderton asked, not following.

"I was supposed to be following the doings of Frazer Bevins," McGeever said. "I was also doing my part to help the CRF get him arrested, by hounding him right into your hands."

"So you're on our side?" Fletcher asked.

McGeever shrugged one shoulder. "I ain't on nobody's side but my own. But I didn't want to see that son of a bitch daughter-f---ing Mecha-smasher get off as easy as he has in the past."

"So you told him we were going to Manhattan?" Anderton asked.

"I did only because I figured it was the easiest way to get him to make an ass of himself. I told him the Mecha had kidnapped an eleven-year-old kid and dragged him to Manhattan. So that made him livid. He was determined to come all this way to free the kid and destroy the Mecha before it destroyed someone else's child."

"So you were working for him only to set him up?" Anderton asked.

"I had to do something to earn my points with the CRF," McGeever said, pocketing his camera.

"And Bevins took the coward's way out," Anderton mused.

The local police, who mostly worked for Hobby, sent down a dive team to recover Bevins's body. They found it almost right where he had dropped. Hitting the water had snapped the bones of his neck, severing his spine, killing him even as he sank, as an autopsy would later prove.

"At least there's one thing to be said," Anderton remarked to Fletcher as the local mortician and his crew loaded the body into the police craft.

"What's that?" Fletcher said, a little green-faced as he watched the crew at work.

"The state won't have to get Bevins's blood on its hands."

"IF Agatha's right and Joe's clean."

Concluded in the next chapter…


	9. 8 WideEyed Innocence

+J.M.J.+

The Eyes Have It

A _Minority Report_/"A.I." Crossover

By "Matrix Refugee"

Author's Note:

I actually drafted much of this chapter long before I wrote the rest of the story; the inspiration for it came from the track on the soundtrack CD for _Minority _Report entitled "A New Beginning". Play it as you read the second half of the chapter and you'll see what I mean. I also did the right thing and watched the DVD of the film recently—and I promptly came to the shocking discovery that one of the characters in it is named Fletcher! So I may have to go back and correct my fic, not the hard way of renaming my character, but the easier way of going back and actually describing him better, since he's really nothing like the Fletcher in the film. WARNING: There is one mildly naughty bit in this chapter, but not enough to up the rating. I don't endorse fornication (I'm Catholic), but in this case, there's only one way for Agatha to find out if that old superstition or whatever it is really happens. Marrying someone might be pointless for her to attempt, since she seems too emotionally damaged from the way she was treated in Pre-Crime for her to function normally as someone's wife. Besides, she hasn't had the strongest moral training, so she, like Joe, doesn't know much better.

Disclaimer:

See Prologue.

Chapter VIII: Wide-Eyed Innocence

The scan of Joe's cube only confirmed Agatha's visions, Anderton's deductions and Joe's own verbal testimony to be true. Hobby had a full diagnostic run on Joe to make sure Bevins hadn't damaged him severely. The techs found a few of his conductors had been knocked askew, but nothing serious, nothing they couldn't fix right away. Agatha insisted on watching the whole operation, even though the techs—and Hobby—warned her it might prove a little disturbing. But it didn't faze her at all. Anderton found himself more unsettled: Joe looked so human on the outside, but underneath the surface.

"But what is to become of me now?" Joe asked, oddly concerned.

"We're going to bring you back to Haddonfield, to your owner," Anderton told Joe.

"They will not want me now," Joe said. "Innocent or not, they will say I have cost them too much trouble."

"We'll see about that," Fletcher said, patting Joe's shoulder reassuringly. Realizing his error, Fletcher blushed.

By nightfall, Anderton and Fletcher personally brought Joe to the offices of his owner, one Ms. Sondra Flack, who operated an escort service out of a hotel on Hackney Street, the Mirrored Rooms.

Ms. Flack regarded Joe from across her desk with a cold, almost indifferent look in her eye. "With the kind of notoriety he's gotten, frame-up or no frame-up, he's of little use now," she said. She looked up at the two detectives. "You know anyone who wants him?"

"I know of a few people," Anderton said.

Once they'd deposited Joe in storage in the back room of the station, Anderton went across town to the offices of the Haddonfield _Dispatch_. At the front desk, a receptionist told him and Fletcher that Halloran McGeever had just left for the night, but his partner Frank Sweitz was still in.

They entered one of the offices, where they came face to face with a dark, green-eyed young man in his shirtsleeves whom Anderton recognized as the skinny kid reporter at the Shangri-La the night of the murder.

"I was hoping you gents would come by so I could get the whole story from you," Sweitz said.

"Actually, we also wanted to ask you something," Anderton said. "Halloran McGeever told me he had connections with some agents for the CRF, so we were wondering if you knew how we could get in touch with them."

Sweitz smiled and spread his hands slightly. "You're talking to one of them," he said. "They've been hoping you'd turn Joe over to us, so they could bring him to one of the refuges over the border in Canada. He'll be in excellent care there."

"Well, that gets the shiny guy off our hands," Fletcher said.

A thought passed through Anderton's mind. "Could we hang onto Joe for a few days?" he asked. "There's someone who'd like to get to know him first."

"How much time you need?" Sweitz asked.

"Just the weekend," Anderton said.

"Now what are you doing with Joe?" Fletcher asked Anderton on their way out.

Anderton paused and drew in a long breath. "Agatha doesn't want to be a Pre-Cog any more. She read this old wives' tale that claims a psychic woman looses her gifts if she has relations with a man."

"So she wants to get cozy with Joe the robot, eh?" Something in Fletcher's tone sounded a sour note that clashed with his otherwise mischievous tone, but it could just be that they were both tired.

That evening, after a quick explanation to Lara, Anderton crashed for the night.

Next morning, when he was more alert, he explained to Lara, at length, what he had in mind.

"We can't have them together here, not with Agnes," Lara said.

"We could take them out to the cottage," Anderton suggested.

"Krista could take Agnes for the weekend," she said. "Besides, after all this, you need the time to rest and regroup."

"I know," he admitted. "And Agatha's caretakers will be looking for her."

"Dr. Hineman called last night when you were asleep."

"So what did you tell her?"

"The truth."

At sunset Saturday evening, Anderton sat with Lara on the back porch, looking down to the beach, watching Agatha as she walked alone. He'd explained the situation to Joe that morning before they'd left, and the Mecha had found the idea thoroughly inciting. 

"Be honest with me: I still think you saw something in Agatha," Lara teased.

"No, I never did," he said. "They treated her as if she were part of the machine. She's too damaged by everything that's happened to her. I don't think she could reciprocate to anyone even if they tried."

Lara was listening, but she gazed down to the shore. "Look. She just might be learning to reciprocate."

Agatha sat down on the shore, right at the waterline, the small waves lapping at her feet.

She loved the water; if she could relate to any one of the elements, it was water. Its soft, cool touch relaxed her, helping her forget the pain of her visions. She skimmed her palms over the glass-smooth wet sand at her feet, letting the water wash over her fingers.

A shadow fell over her. Even before she saw its shape, she knew who it was. She looked up.

Joe approached and knelt beside her, sitting on his heels, clad in a plain gray shirt and khaki shorts borrowed from Anderton. The two men were about the same size, but Joe was a little slighter-built. "I knew I would find you here," he said.

"How did you know?" she asked.

"Wherever water can be seen, your eyes go to it."

"I lived in water for six years," she said.

He cocked his head. "Were you a mermaid?" he asked, with a teasing lilt.

"No. The lab technicians at Pre-Crime kept me in shallow water to help me relax, so they could see my visions better."

He laid a hand on her wrist and stroked it gently. "From what your friend Mr. Anderton tells me, it seems they used your brain the way women have used me."

She had to ask. "Is it true?"

"Is what true?" he asked, his smooth brows gathered slightly.

"The legend…if a woman with psychic gifts…lies with a man, she loses her gifts."

"I would not know." Then with a tender smolder starting to glow in his eyes, he added, "There is only one way for you to discover the answer to your question."

She looked at him, a little fearful. "I don't think I could."

"Perhaps it is because you think of it in the wrong manner. Do not think of this embrace as a means of losing something: think, rather, that by it, you gain another kind of knowledge.

His hand crept up her arm to her shoulder as he moved in closer. The wavelets washed about their feet. "There is another legend, of a water sprite who longed to become human, that she might so win the love of a prince who swam in her waters every day. Undine, peri, rusalka…whatever name she bears from land to land." His eyes, almost the same blue green as the water about them, looked into hers from just inches away. "You are another water sprite, Agatha," he said. His forehead touched hers. "Let me make you human."

"Is this love?" she asked.

He hesitated. "For you it may be the only love you can know."

She reached out to him. "Make me human," she begged.

His hand on her shoulder slid behind her neck. She felt his chest press against hers. Then she felt his mouth touch hers in a gentle kiss, soft, velvety.

She drew back from him slightly. "Has it happened?" she asked.

He smiled on her with a puckish gleam in his eye. "No. It has only started." He guided her hand to his waist. "You are wise in ways few people are wise, and yet you still have much to learn."

"Is that why they call it knowing?" she asked.

He paused, thinking. "That is one reason."

"Teach me more," she begged, her free hand reaching behind his head.

He smiled, his smoldering eyes starting to catch fire. "The lesson continues."

Anderton stood up on the porch, stepping to the railing. He stood there motionless, gazing down to the water's edge. His lips parted in a soundless sigh and his jaw sagged slightly.

The Mecha knelt before Agatha, between her slightly spread knees, facing her, with her arms already wound about his waist. He leaned his torso against hers, pushing her backward onto the sand as a wave rolled in over them. Agatha clasped him to her, their faces locking together in a deep kiss.

Anderton could bear it no longer; he dropped his gaze to the railing, his hands already gripping it.

Lara came up behind him and lifted his chin with a fingertip. "Don't want any flies to get in there," she teased, gently. He tried to smile, but he knew it looked as forced as it felt. "Hey, what's wrong?" she turned him to face her.

"Nothing, just tired from this last case," he said, half-truthful.

She looked him in the eye. "I think you're jealous."

He glanced down to the water's edge, not daring to look directly at Agatha and…that Mecha. "I'm not. If that's what she wants."

"I think you are."

"I never had any interest in her."

"It's not that kind of jealousy. You don't think I figured it out?"

"Figured what out?"

"You love her."

"I never did…I couldn't."

"No, not that kind of love. You're not acting like a jealous lover, you're acting like a concerned older brother looking out for his baby sister." She put a reassuring hand on his arm. "You have nothing to worry about her being with him. He's probably the best someone like her could manage. She's too different for most men, but he doesn't see that. All he can see is a beautiful woman who wants him."

"But why him? Why couldn't she find someone else…someone…?"

"Someone who's fully human? He's just a different kind of human." She pulled on his arm gently. "Come on inside. Let them have some privacy."

"That's what I'm afraid of," he said, with a last glance down the beach.

Some time later, after the sun had gone down and he and Lara had gone upstairs to their room, Anderton heard the porch door open and close.

The stairway creaked. Two sets of footsteps ascended, Agatha's and the Mecha's footsteps just behind hers.

Anderton got up and opened the bedroom door, peering out so that he couldn't be seen.

Joe led Agatha up the hall to her room. She paused in the strip of light cast by the open door at the head of the hallway, glancing around.

"What is it, Agatha?" he asked, facing her.

"I am afraid," she said.

He reached out with one hand and drew her to him. She kept her body clear of his.

"Of me? Of what I can do for you?"

"Yes."

"I cannot and will not hurt you," Joe said. "You have been hurt enough from a lack of affection for much too long. Let me fill this emptiness."

She put her hands on his. "Do this for me."

He drew her into the shadows. A door opened in the darkness. A light went on in the room. The two shadows moved against the light, Joe's tall slim one, Agatha's smaller one. The door closed behind them, blocking out the light.

Anderton closed the bedroom door and leaned his brow on it.

He felt Lara's hand on his shoulder, turning him around. "It's all right," she said. "She's in good hands, the best hands."

"But there's something missing," he said.

"I know. But she isn't to blame. She doesn't know any better, neither does he. Come on, it's getting late. Come to bed."

Later, as he lay in the dark, next to Lara, Anderton kept his ears open, listening to the night sounds, crickets trilling, a sleepy bird twittering outside, and from down the hall, an occasional creak of bedsprings or a delighted yelp. The racket slowly grew more constant.

Agatha's voice rose in a long wail of delight, growing higher and higher until it cracked. Then silence. A ripple of sound rose that might have been a soft sigh.

Anderton clenched his teeth, then his whole face, fighting the tears that slid from the corners of his eyes.

He slept lightly for the rest of the night, falling asleep and awakening every half hour, listening to the night sounds, wondering if Agatha and her consort were at it again, but silence hovered, broken only by the crickets and the soft waves outside.

Toward dawn, he ventured out into the hallway, partly to attend to nature, partly to check on their guests.

The door to Agatha's room stood slightly ajar. He nudged it open gently and peered into the room.

The gray light of early morning fell over the bed. Under the rumpled bedcovers, Joe lay on his side, his back to the door, screening something.

Anderton stepped closer. Joe stirred and propped himself higher, his elbow leaning gracefully on the pillows, and peered over his shoulder at Anderton, as if guarding the woman at his side. Agatha lay curled up beside him, her head against his chest, sleeping unconcernedly, her face at peace, but with a look Anderton had never seen on it before.

He stepped back and closed the door.

Agatha looked the same and yet utterly different when she came down for breakfast, with Joe at her heels. A light had been extinguished in her eyes and a new one kindled. Joe maintained his usual courtly decorum around her, but Anderton had a feeling the Mecha expected she might want more of him.

"The transport should be coming soon," Anderton said to Agatha, as she helped Lara clear the table.

"Where are you going?" Joe asked the younger woman.

Agatha looked at Anderton. "May I tell him?"

"Can you keep a secret, Joe?" Anderton asked.

"I can lock down that information," Joe said. With a proud little smile, he added, "No Orga can keep a secret the way a Mecha can."

At eleven that morning, a car came from the local CRF chapter headquarters. At the same time, another car, accompanied by two police cruisers, came for Agatha.

These two young creatures, abused and used by society in such different and so similar ways…strange circumstances had thrown them together, and now they would drawn apart just as suddenly.

Anderton remembered saying goodbye to Agatha and explaining, as briefly as he could, to Dr. Hineman what had happened. He remembered the CRF reps cordially welcoming Joe and thanking him (Anderton) for clearing Joe's name.

But in later years, recalling it, the parting seemed to have happened to someone else and he watched it as a spectator. 

He never saw Joe again after that, but once a year at Christmas, they received a note crusted with Canadian stamps, in which Joe tastefully described the years' happenings.

Agatha's caretakers wanted to press charges against Anderton for helping her slip away from them, but when they heard how Agatha's vision had helped Anderton trace the trail of evidence Bevins had left behind, they dropped the charges. However, Rance reprimanded Anderton and Fletcher. Anderton expected further disciplinary action, but nothing further happened. Lara claimed that was the odd thing about small town justice: it was a two-eyed creature, but one of those eyes was sometimes blind.

Agatha still had her dream visions, still saw facets of other people's lives as they might be, but she no longer woke up terrified from witnessing a murder. More often she dreamt of Joe and his gallant adventures in his new life.

Once a year, on the 20th of May, she received a rush delivery package from Canada, always with an address that didn't seem to jive with the contents, except for those who knew.

Inside, as always, was a silver rose and a note, signed "Always with you, your J."

The End


	10. Epilogue: Loving Eyes

TITLE: The Eyes Have It: A "Minority Report"/"A.I." crossover  
  
AUTHOR: "Matrix Refugee"  
  
RATING: PG-13  
  
ARCHIVE: Yess!! Permission already granted  
  
FEEDBACK: Pretty please with chocolate sauce??  
  
SUMMARY: Agatha ponders David's fate  
  
DISCLAIMER: I do not own Minority Report, which is the property of DreamWorks SKG, et al, based on a short novel by Philip K. Dick; Nor do I own "A.I.: Artificial Intelligence", which is the property of DreamWorks SKG et al, and which both belong to Steven Spielberg. I love you, Steve, don't sue me.  
  
NOTES: Joshua Falken sent me a very kind e-mail asking me a question that for whatever reason did not occur to me when I was writing this and which made me realize there was a small but crucial plot-hole I was not even aware of. So...this one's for you, Joshua! (Thanks!)  
  
  
About a year or two after the "Haddonfield incident", Agatha received a letter from Joe that did not accompnay his customary silver rose:  
  
Dearest Agatha,  
  
I understand that besides having terrible visions of the dreadful things Orgas enact upon each other, you are able to see into the future (or that you could, thanks to my tende ministrations). Did you lose this gift entirely? If you have not, do you know what happened to David, the little one who held my hand and saved my brain? Did he ever find the Blue Fairy? Did she ever make him into a real boy? And did he ever go home to his mommy?  
  
If you cannot answer these questions, do not trouble your soul. It is just that no one has been able to tell me anything concerning David. But perhaps you could tell me waht will become of the little one.  
  
Always, your,  
Joe  
  
She still had her dreams, but thanks to Joe, she no longer awakened in the night frozen with terror after witnessing a murder, a factor which Dr. Hineman could not understand. But as yet, she had seen nothing regarding the little one named David, or his fate.  
  
When she went to bed that night, Agatha slipped Joe's letter under her pillow. Perhaps tonight she would dream of the boy who was not like other boys.  
  
The dream did not come the first night, nor the second night; but on the third night, something came to her that answered Joe's question.  
  
An amphibicopter, with the boy and his little bear, hovering through the depths of an inland ocean, its headlights lighting the gates of some recreation place, a theme park with a fairy-tale theme, statues of elves and faerys crusted with seaweeds and sea moss...the 'copter approaching one statue at the top of a staircase, a female form in a blue gown, with delicate wings...the 'copter stopping before it...suddenly something falling over the copter and statue, enclosing both as if in a cage...  
  
Time passing...she saw it speeded up almost to blinding speed...the lights dying on the 'copter...the bear ceasing to move...the boy keeping watch in the dark, pleading, praying as it were...then his own cessation of movement...the waters growing colder, the anemones and other sea life freezing and dying around them...the sea turning to ice...Eons seemed to pass...  
  
Then strange graceful silver figures approaching...by some means they melted the ice, freeing the icebound city...their discovering the 'copter and the Blue Fairy...their revitalizing the boy, reading his mind...they took him to some place resembling an ordinary house, the one he had know, but which seemed utterly different...His encountering a figure very like the Blue Fairy...The boy asking her to grant his wish...Her gentle refusal, followed by a dialogue she couldn't quite grasp...  
  
Later still, one of the silvery, graceful figures approaching David as he played alone...the guardian, or whatever it was, leading David to a room where a woman lay half asleep on a white bed...The woman, clearly David's mommy, washing his hair, dressing him, playing with him...then the two of them lying nestled together on the bed, both apparantly asleep, the little bear at watch on the foot of the bed...  
  
Agatha awoke from the vision with tears in her eyes. What did it all mean? She put on the bedside light and reached for the pad of paper she kept there. She wrote down all that she could remember, then she copied it into a letter for Joe. She took the original copy and tore it up. She opened the window to the night breeze and let the wind scatter the pieces. Dr. Hineman didn't have to see it: she'd only try to analyze it, and that would be like taking apart a flower to find out why it's so beautiful. This was between Joe and her.  
  
Dearest Joe,  
  
I have only just dreamed of what will become of David, the little one who saved your brain. I can make only little sense of it, but it appears the Blue Fairy cannot make him into a real boy...but she will help him leanr that he need not be a real boy in order to be loved...  
  
  
Four days later, on the other side of the ocean, Joe received Agatha's letter. On reading it, if he could have shed tears, he would have wept for the pang that hovered in his awareness. Was this what Orgas called disillusionment? No matter...But he realized that whatever David learned from what happened to him, it would be for the best for the little, one. They--David, Agatha, and he, and perhaps the others they had met along the way--had all learned to see the world differently from having crossed each other's paths, even though they had never seen each other all together. 


End file.
